


strange little hearts

by Anonymous



Category: Vampire Hunter D (Anime & Manga), Vampire Hunter D (Books)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:06:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29517825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: While lending aid in a town already stricken by disaster, Doris Lang rediscovers D, is wrongfully accused, and encounters both enemies and tragedy where she hadn't expected them.Once again, bookverse with all that that implies. Story written for Kink Bingo,striptease.
Relationships: D/Doris Lang
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2
Collections: Anonymous Fics





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written ~2010. This was written in a couple of days, and the plotting shows it; between this and _i ain't scared of lightning_ this needed edits even more keenly, but I bit the bullet and accepted I'm unlikely to do the heavy structural edits it probably needs. 
> 
> Nonetheless, deep thank you to lovepeaceohana and shiromori, without whose encouragement these stories never would have been seen again. I hope even in their rough form you enjoy this extremely late archiving.

_“The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.” - Jacques Benigne Bossuel_

Embarrassingly enough, he woke before she did.

Doris hadn't meant to fall asleep at his bedside, curled up with her legs tucked under her like some lovelorn adolescent mooning over a pretty man in a hospital bed—though 'pretty' didn't really begin to describe D. But she'd been tired, first from working all day helping with the repairs, and then from arguing all afternoon with the Elders over his survival, eventually resorting to the hint of physical threat to back up her defense. To be truthful, she'd half been afraid someone would sneak in and put an end to him, which was why she'd pulled a chair up, and why she was sprawled over, her head pillowed on her arms and fast asleep, when he stirred.

The village had suffered a recent attack from the Nobility, and was not in the mood to entertain the notion of mercy, no matter how staunchly she defended him. And D was asleep from the sun, the worst possible time to have an attack—not, she supposed, considering the life he led, that he was likely to actually have an opportune time—and so had little way to defend himself.

It wasn't his movement that woke her, stirring from his bed. It was the low rise and fall of conversing voices, pricking at her senses, keen even through the fog of weariness.

"...fought like hell," a hoarse voice was saying, its low tones distinctly ridden by amusement. "Thought she was actually gonna shoot somebody for a minute there to keep 'em offa you. Bad timing, D. As usual. You'd think you'd pay more att—"

The voice cut off abruptly as she pushed up, blinking groggily at him as she braced her hands against the bed. "I'm sorry," she said, inconsequentially. The blanket was thick and soft beneath her fingers; she sat back and rubbed at her cheek. "I didn't mean to fall asleep on you."

For a moment silence stretched between them with a near-physical thickness. He studied her, eyes moving slowly over her face, her sloppily tied back hair, the thick coat that swathed her form—he took her in as though contemplating whether she was actually real or merely a phantom.

Doris Lang smiled, her lips twisting ruefully. "I know the feeling," she said, responding to the wordless assessment. "Never expected t'see your face again." Her voice was low and warm, and she met his eyes steadily when his examination was complete. She'd done her share of staring when she first realized who they'd discovered, and more sitting in this room tracing the lines of his face with her eyes, examining him again and again. She could barely believe it even now, with D up and talking.

"Doris," he said, voice low and rough. She suppressed the shiver that prickled down her spine. "Where am I?"

"In the hospital. We took you here because—well, we weren't gonna leave you there and work around you. We're tearin' down the old stuff. And it's—" she hesitated, considered asking him about the strange voice and the information it had presumably conveyed. But D liked his privacy, and she wasn't too keen on discussing personal things in this hospital, where they undoubtedly had hostile ears everywhere. "—not real friendly here," she finished. "So you might wanna be on your feet."

He tossed back the blankets and rose to his feet, as cool and calm and fluid as though he hadn't just been nearly dead on his feet from sunshine. Doris stood herself, grabbing his coat off the back of the chair and offering it to him; it was heavy and she had to fist both hands in the leather to hold it up, but he lifted it easily one-handed and swung it around, sliding his arms through. His sword leaned against the bed, and his hat sat on the small table beside the bed, along with a glass of water.

He dressed with quiet, economical movements. Doris stood, arms folded beneath her breasts, to watch. Her own wool coat was insufficient covering against the dead, antiseptic chill of the hospital's steel and concrete, but she wanted to move for more reasons than one.

“Are you on a job?” she asked.

He turned back to her, settling his sword on his back. “I was on my way to one,” he replied briefly.

Well, hell. Disappointment flared; Doris shook it off. “You need to head out right away?”

He looked out the window, studying the lay of the buildings, the mud further out, burying the remains of houses and shops. “I am to meet my employer here.”

Surprisingly talkative for D. "Would you like to stay with me for the night?"

The question slipped out before she could stop it or rephrase it. His hands stilled and his head turned to look at her, the exquisite stillness of his features impenetrable. Quietly he said, "alright."

She was silent from pure shock for a moment, struck simply dumb from the unexpected agreement. It had been like a pipe dream, a bone tossed out for herself, a hook she hadn't considered baited. But if nothing else Doris was resilient; she gathered herself in a heartbeat, beaming. "Okay. Well, my place is temporary, but it's of decent size. I'm borrowin' a house, since after the landslide a lot of folks left for greener pastures. We'd better go soon, because the doctors have been kickin' up a fuss."

He nodded once, silently, and she turned to lead the way, pushing the door open and proceeding into the hall. There were people, but mostly patients or mud-smeared workers asking—faces drawn and weary—after their family members. She couldn't help the lurch of concern and unhappiness in the pit of her stomach any more than she could help the fact of the landslide in the first place, but they moved silently past. A few nurses glanced up and gave them nods; they were too busy with the backbreaking menial and constant tasks to bother sparing the energy to hold real grudges or bother being angry about those that had done neither them nor the people they cared for harm. There was only one doctor who'd been a real problem—who had done his damned best to keep the mayor from being swayed by her arguments—and if he knew what was good for him he was avoiding Doris, who had expressed her displeasure very clearly during their last clash of wills.

She spotted him talking to one of the diggers when they emerged into the front room, but he was halfway behind a door and looked thoroughly distracted. She lifted a hand to the nurse on duty, who nodded in return, and stepped out the door into the mud and chill.

It was real cold. Too cold, in her personal opinion, but maybe that was just the result of the dogged weariness, which left her with little energy for optimism or generating her own heat. They'd gotten to the level where they were digging out corpses instead of just wood and stone and battered furniture, and for a moment—ludicrous, since part of D had been above ground, and the rest was cleanly lumped over, buried instead of swallowed, his face clean and still—when she'd glimpsed his features she'd thought him dead and her heart had knotted and dropped in her chest with a deep clean pain.

It was someone behind her shouting, "Jesus! We've got a live one!" That had jolted her out of her stupefied trance and into motion.

Doris turned the corner behind the hospital, into the open stable where the horses were tied, and tipped her chin toward the sleek, professionally constructed cyborg horse at the end. "There's your mount. But it's not that far, and it doesn't have stabling."

He moved forward to check the animal over, hands moving with silent, professional speed. "Will it be safe here?"

"Yup," she said simply. She'd made sure nobody was dumb enough to try anything stupid—and if they were dumb enough, she'd made sure they were too scared to.

He nodded, accepting her word, and released the reins. With a brief touch to the horse's side, he turned back toward her. "Then I'll leave him," he said briefly.

His easy acceptance of her word made a little flush of warmth go through her, and she allowed it. Lingering tension over the Nobility and her status as once-bitten—even though the absent scars proved his death—meant she still got some odd looks from time to time, never pleasant. And this was D, of course. “Follow me,” she said to cover for it, tipping her head toward the street.

He moved after her without a word of protest.

And down into the mud of the street. Almost everyone was muddy here, or dirty, whether through working in the rubble or the simply lack of available clean water. She'd done some sponge bathing with gritty filtered water, but the time to do so had been a luxury. She didn't have children to look after, after all, or burials to manage, or houses to salvage. All she had was the backbreaking labour in the mud with the diggers and sinking and pervasive feeling the utter futility, watching the drawn faces and gaunt children.

Sometimes life on the Frontier was insanely rewarding—she loved it here in her own way, living with Dan, working side by side—but sometimes it was sheer hell.

Her dark thoughts lasted most of the walk, and D was silent beside her, scanning his surroundings with a critical eye. She was grateful for it; the company was more than welcome after the bitter fatalistic loneliness of the last week, but anyone else might have tried to talk to her, engage her, draw her out of the hard shell of silence. D probably wouldn't have been inclined to even if she had wanted to carry on a conversation, but for all that it was a comfortable silence between them.

The house was set on a hill at the far end of town, raised up out of the mud; she climbed the long set of solid steps and dug out the big iron key, fitting it into the old-fashioned lock. The other lock, set above the door, beeped softly as she pushed through, acknowledging her authorized presence.

Holding the door open for D, she looked out into the street. Mostly empty—there had been a few curious or wary stares on the walk here, but not much, since not many people here had time for others' business these days—and the sky was a flat iron warning above them, not heavy enough for rain clouds but not allowing much sunlight. It was probably good for D; for everyone else, it felt like the leaden weight of a promise for more disaster.

Doris finally shook her head and let the door swing shut behind her.

"There are tons of spare bedrooms," she said matter-of-factly, gesturing toward the dark staircase. "Right up there. The kitchen's through there, living room..." She led the way into the living room and made a beeline for the fireplace, kneeling. Kindling and logs were stacked up beside the grate. The house was too damn big; even with the migration, by all rights she should be sharing it. But the landslide had taken a lot more than houses and solid ground away.

Doris swallowed the lump in her throat and stood with kindling in her hand, reaching for the box of matches. "We've been clearing away what the landslide left us," she explained. "I came down to visit and..." she gestured. "They let me bunk down here in exchange for some help and the use of the horses."

He nodded, coming to stand beside the divan that crouched low and battered before the fire. "How many did they lose?"

She knelt again to keep from looking at his face, feeling a sour taste flood her mouth even thinking the number. "Over a hundred," she said, and finishing with the arrangement of the wood she struck a match and lit the tinder. "This place was hit hardest by the storms, and for a bit there it almost looked like the red cloud was coming down on 'em, too." It would have been hell to evacuate all the people and animals, with so much of their transportation and supplies destroyed. Luckily as they calculated the descent it turned out they were spared from that particular ordeal, but there had been some tense moments trying to grapple with the ordeal of strategizing for the wrecked community.

Doris had more or less inadvertently dumped herself in the middle of the issue; showing up with transport, supplies, and a pair of willing hands. Not to mention experience on the roads and a familiarity with what monsters needed killing and how to do it. She'd went back to grunt work when the threat of immediate travel faded, but for a while there she'd been knocking shoulders and butting heads with town officials, who didn't take kindly to young women—or 'little girls', as they so charmingly phrased it—giving them instructions without much patience for their tender male egos.

Doris was used to it, though. A whole lot of men liked to default to Greco's 'look, like and conquer' mindset, and Doris was used to dealing with them. If she had to beat them up a little to make them listen, well, it was a shortcut she was good at.

The problem being that beating the mayor around wasn't a good idea, pretty much ever, and while Doris could be polite, going hip deep in mud digging out the remnants of people's lives and watching children starve around her robbed her of any diplomacy—or more honestly, of any desire for diplomacy.

"The officials here are assholes," she concluded briskly, warming her hands against the fire. She'd actually been sleeping on the living room floor, but he didn't need to know that, and she'd folded the blankets away in the corner every morning. Sleeping in the bedrooms felt too much like invading where the ghosts of those lost might linger, and she hadn't wanted to deal with it after the first night. But she had the sneaking feeling he might prefer to sleep on the divan or the floor, and then they'd have a problem.

A tiny corner of her mind piped up immediately with a solution, but she firmly quashed it, feeling her cheeks flare. Now was not at all the time for that, and besides—

You never did pay him, that little part of her brain reminded slyly.

Oh, hell. Doris turned to him, fastening her coat around her. "Should you be meeting your employer?" She asked. "If you don't mind me asking—what kind of job is it, do you know? Not a vampire, here?" These people shouldn't have to deal with that on top of everything else.

After a moment he said, "he will find me and explain."

She hesitated, then nodded. The statement and all its implications made her uneasy, but she couldn't help but trust D. And besides, she could take care of herself; if something came up, she'd just have to deal with it. You had to take things as they came if you wanted to survive out here.

"Okay," she said, and studied him. "Do you want something to eat?"

"No," he said. Typical. "Your brother?"

The question startled her when it shouldn't have, took her off guard by jarring her out of her own dark thoughts. She looked into his shadowed face, studying him intently. "He's doing pretty good," she responded. "Apprenticed out to a dragon-hunter. He doesn't spend that much time at home anymore." She let the wistfulness colour her voice that she'd normally hide; D would understand. He wasn't an outsider in their family, as odd as the thought seemed considering he'd been absent for years.

"The work will suit him," D said quietly.

"He's happy." She grinned, remembering Dan's delight every time he came home, full to the brim of stories; he'd pitch in with the chores, waving his hands whenever they were free to illustrate his graphic and enthusiastic tales. She couldn't help but tease him at their extravagance, but then that was what sisters did. "He'll be sad he missed you."

D's chin lowered briefly, acknowledging the words. Doris couldn't help but wonder what he was thinking, what had spurred him to ask the question. It was good, somehow, to know that maybe he thought of them. She'd certainly thought of him her fair share; he was a good memory, and though she didn't have much time for daydreaming—and was content with that state of affairs—there were certainly times when she had indulged herself.

"Come to the fire," she said. His dark eyes shifted to look at her. She wondered if he felt the cold, if it bothered him, if the Noble blood in him simply rendered him impervious to it. But whether it did or not, he came and crouched beside her with a sinuous and fluid grace, extending one long white hand to the warmth of the caged flame.

Her hand was smaller than his, and golden-tanned, but it made her smile to see faint similarities; calluses and hard use, dirt beneath the nails. For all his monochrome elegance, D worked hard.

"I meant to ask you," she began, and then hesitated. D looked at her, eyes shifting to the side slightly to focus on her face. Before she could stop herself, in as delicate a tone as possible, she asked, "who do you travel with?" To make her meaning explicitly clear, she looked at his hand.

His absolute stillness intensified in a way she almost couldn't describe, like a pool of darkness spreading around him. Doris kept her breathing steady, though her heart lurched in her chest and she was almost certain he had to have heard. She kept her eyes on him, waiting for an answer or a lack of one, expressionless.

Breaking the silence so suddenly she gave a startled little twitch, he said, "a gift from my father." His lips twisted, and the expression was cold and dark and unexpected, a flash of strange black humour. He lifted his left hand and turned it upright to face her, the palm smooth and unmarked.

Doris pulled her hands away from the fire and took his wrist, lightly, gently supporting his hand. It was hardly necessary, but it let her tug him a fraction closer, let her feel his slow, steady pulse against her fingertips, his cool skin against her hand.

And slowly, like the trees pushing through the cleared-away mud, a face swam up out of the clear skin of his palm. She sucked in a shocked breath, her grip tightening involuntarily, and stared down at the face; a slightly crooked, aquiline little profile, a strange face in miniature. The lips curled in a slow smile that made the skin tighten all down her spine. "Ah, a woman's touch," it sighed, hoarse voice riding the line of deliberate mockery.

Doris didn't drop his hand like she'd been stung, but it was an effort. "God," she breathed, and jerked her head up to look at D, wide-eyed.

D was expressionless, and he'd lowered the other hand when she had, his arm across his knees. She looked down at his head, a flush starting up on her cheeks beneath his unflinching gaze, and ran her thumb lightly against the base of his, at the edge of the features. "A gift?" She asked, and then a memory swam up abruptly from the depths of her mind. "D—is this how you survived Rei-Ginsei's stake?"

A harsh laugh rattled from his palm. "He didn't," it replied. "I brought him back. He's got a tough little ticker, you know. You should be flattered, sweetheart, it's not every day a man comes back from the dead for you."

"I am," she said flatly, which actually shut the thing up for a moment. "Parasite?" She asked, looking up again.

"Symbiote," D replied. There was a curious note in his low cool voice, a tone she couldn't decipher that nonetheless made her flush and look down once more.

"Oh. Oh yes, I guess it would qualify, wouldn't it?" Bringing you back to life probably counts as fair payment for lodging. The manic note of her thoughts had a certain hysterical humour to them. Doris licked her lips, swallowed hard, and concentrated on controlling herself. Oh boy.

"I remember you," the little voice purred, the roughness of its voice combining with the honeyed tone and somehow making the words sound absolutely obscene, "but it's nice to get a good look at the face. Mostly I remember what I tou—"

She pressed her finger over its mouth. "This obnoxious with you, too?" She demanded tartly, and then gave a little shriek and dropped his hand when a warm wet swipe curled up to her knuckle. D retracted his arm immediately, folding it into the darkness of his coat.

"Yes," D said. Just that, but it was all that was necessary.

"Yeah, I bet," she sighed. "Captive audience, after all." The rasping little voice started to say something, but D closed his hand. Hard. Doris bit her lip to keep from smiling at the muffled protesting sound.

"He knows when to pay attention," D said flatly.

She touched his wrist lightly, drawing the arm back toward her. For a second the muscles were like stone, and then he allowed it, his hand still closed tight. "I'm glad, though," she said, tracing the tendons in his wrist with her thumbnail, feeling bizarrely brave. Maybe it was the heat of the fire, and how close he was. "It saved your life. That's an awful big reason to be grateful for it. To it. Whatever."

There was another faint sound from his hand. "I'm not talking to you," she said to it, exasperated. It was a measure of how weird things could and had gotten on the Frontier that she didn't feel at all odd, talking to a man's hand as if it had a mind of its own. Since it did, she couldn't bring herself to be too weirded out over it.

Doris looked up and met his eyes, her smile fading. "D, I—"

The sound of the doorknocker being used resounded through the house, thick hollow booms that raised the hair on the back of her neck. Her hand leapt to her side, where she kept her gun, but she forced her fingers to relax, rising to her feet. "Your employer?" She asked D.

He, too, had risen. "Possibly," he said. He looked at her, face inscrutable beneath the shadow of his hat. "You won't stay here."

"Nope," she confirmed cheerfully.

She thought she saw his lips twitch faintly. "Alright," he said, and left the room.

Close on his heels, she trailed him to the heavy front door. She was cautious enough to toss him the heavy iron key, body humming with tension, and murmur "confirmed" flatly from behind him when the electronic lock gave a higher beep in quiet query.

The door swung open. But it wasn't his customer, it was the good doctor—the one who'd fought so hard to keep her from saving D's life.

Doris blinked, stunned, and then realized that D and the doctor face to face might not be the best of ideas as her fingers slid from her whip. She stepped past him, imposing herself between them in Doctor Oreson's line of view. "Can I help you, Doctor?" She asked, and let the icy tone of her voice communicate that he was not welcome here.

"Miss Lang," he said, recollecting himself beneath her hard, narrow stare. "I came to deliver the personal affects of Madam Bailey."

It was like a punch to the gut, it so effectively threw her off guard. Her breath caught, raw with pain, and she blinked rapidly and sank her teeth into her lower lip. "How..." Her voice was squeezed down to a whisper. Doctor Oreson extended a medium-sized dark wooden box to her, battered at the corners with a name written in elegant but flaking gold filigree on one corner.

"Her belongings were largely unsalvageable," he said, voice brisk. "But she did leave everything to you, and this was what her safe box contained in the mayor's office." He gave a cold, sharp nod. "Hello, stranger."

D said nothing, either out of natural reticence or because he'd picked up on her tension and dislike—not, admittedly, hard to do.

Doris accepted the box numbly. Some hint of common sense or wariness struggled up from the sudden mire of grief. "And you found it necessary to come all this way to tell me?" She asked, a hint of acid surfacing in her voice.

He drew himself up, face hardening with offense. "I thought it fitting—" He began, but she'd seen the quick flicker of his eyes to D. Bullshit, she thought with sudden, exhausted venom. The doctor had made it very clear within her first few days that he thought very highly of himself and his position as a treasured and skilled Frontier doctor. And he didn't even like her. He'd just used this as an excuse to come and snoop.

"Gee, thanks," she said, and slammed the door in his face, wheeling on her heel to stride off down the hall again. D followed her this time, without a word.

"Asshole," she said, almost spitting the words as she dropped the box on the divan and paced across the room, first to the fire and then to the window. "She thought he was a supercilious jerk, and he treated her like a hopped-up servant. Fitting for him to deliver her last personal effects—fuckin' asshole."

D was silent for a long moment. When she turned to look at him, standing in the darkened doorframe, he said in that low even voice, "he wants you."

She stared at him open-mouthed. Like Doctor Oreson's earlier announcement it floored her right out of hostility; this time into incredulity. "You can't be serious," she said weakly.

He gave her a look that, for D, was positively eloquent.

“But—” Almost speechless, the wind neatly taken out of her sails, Doris flapped a hand wildly. “He’s such a—” Not that it should surprise her, she supposed. Frontier men who couldn’t deal with attractive women who were stronger than them—and, most importantly, didn’t want them—often defaulted to hostility. She should know, she was pretty goddamn familiar with the phenomenon. “Oh, come on,” she finally settled on.

One corner of his mouth turned up, a spare sharp sign of amusement, clear enough to surprise her. Then it was swallowed into his customary composure, but Doris tucked it away into a corner of her mind to turn over later.

"It's getting late," she said. Weariness dragged at her bones, the sucking fog of labour-induced wear. She needed to sleep, to be prepared in the morning for more work, but how did she shoo him out?

Exhaustion won out over manners. "I've been sleeping down here," she said. "You're welcome to any of the bedrooms—"

The brim of his hat lowered, briefly; the faint movement of his head stopped at enough of an angle to let her know he'd found her neat little pile of blankets in the corner. She didn't honestly think he hadn't spotted it in his first sweep of the room, so it was either a courteous gesture or he was reinterpreting its use. Her money—if she had had any—would be on the latter.

"What's wrong with them?" He asked.

"I feel like I'm intruding," Doris blurted, twisting her fingers into her belt loops. She focused on the brim of his hat, jaw held tight. "I shouldn't be here," she confessed quietly, all the ragged feeling she'd been bottling up for a week spilling out very suddenly. "I feel like a squatter, even though I know, really I do, that they're—" Her breath hitched, and then whooshed out on a tired sigh, "—they're dead. It still feels like I'm trespassing."

It felt surprisingly cathartic to be admitting to something she'd thought was so small in the long run, when she touched on it mentally at all. But standing there in the empty room, meeting D's eyes, it felt like a small but festering wound had been lanced, and the echoing, anticipatory emptiness of the house seemed to ease a little, filling with the crackle of the fire and the sound of her breathing instead of being filled with her own breath-held waiting for another key to turn in the lock.

D turned and walked in even steps to her small folded pile of blankets. While Doris watched, uncomprehending, he lifted them and returned to her, dropping them into her arms. She stared upwards, questioning.

"I'll take the floor," was all he said.

"No," she said, surprised. "It's all right—"

"Take the divan."

"I've been sleeping on the floor for a week. It's not going to hurt me."

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Doris," he said, and her stomach lurched pleasantly, the way it always did when she heard him say her name. "I'll take the floor."

She planted her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at him. "Are you doing this 'cause I'm a girl?"

He reached out and with a brief, graceful motion swept her hair back over her shoulder, fingers lightly touching her cheek as he retracted his hand. He wasn't smiling now but his thumb brushed her lower lip and she caught her breath very suddenly in her throat. "No," he said. She believed him. "Take the divan."

She touched her cheek. "You don't know how to lose an argument," she muttered to his back. He didn't reply.

It was the middle of the night and she sat up, suddenly awake, her coat falling away from her. What are you doing? she thought to herself, but got no real answer. At first the thought formed in that part of her mind still halfway between sleep and waking, a tempting dream that would have been so easy to indulge if it had just been a dream, period, some fluid and amorphous song of the subconscious.

But it wasn't. He really was laying there, breathing in the dark—maybe even asleep. D, solid and real and not hers, not at all. And Doris was okay with that. She had years of happiness all on her own behind her now, and she didn't need him. It didn't mean she didn't want him. It didn't mean there wasn't something still between them, turning the air still and breathless when their eyes met right.

She slid her legs over the divan and stood. This wasn't something she could do if she would regret it, she understood, and it wasn't something she would start if she wasn't sure of it, or even thought she might regret it. It was a quiet kind of certainty that spilled out from the center of her chest, and she moved softly over the ground toward him, feet almost soundless.

He knew, of course, and rolled to face her; either she'd woken him with even her cat-quiet movements alerting his superhuman senses, or he simply hadn't been sleeping. Either seemed equally likely, but the dark eyes looking up at her were clear and intent, and the air between them seemed to thicken, briefly. Doris stood over him, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders, her hands open at her sides.

Finally she said, "D," and her voice was low, careful, with a husky edge that startled her. Was she going to do this? The answer startled her with its wholesale simplicity.

Yes.

He sat up, coat falling around him, fine dark hair shrouding his face briefly. He didn't quite look disheveled—the spare economy of his movements and expressions, even appearance despite that unearthly beauty, didn't quite allow for that—but despite the fact that both were dressed she felt like there was nothing between them all of a sudden in the bare heated honesty of the moment—nothing that really mattered. Nothing, for example, she thought with a sudden tart mischief that startled herself, accompanied by a spiced wave of warm red desire, that couldn't be quickly removed.

"D..." It should have been strange, only her voice falling into the quiet of the room, just one word. It didn't, and the thought made her smile. "D," she repeated just for the pleasure of saying it. And then, matter-of-fact, because it didn't hurt to ask, "can I kiss you?"

He was perfectly still, almost frozen, and his eyes glittered at her through the blackness, sharp as a knife. She waited—maybe not precisely patiently, but with a sense of time yawning, going still, and each moment simply gave her more time to examine his face, dwelling on the sharp line of his jaw, the brief flare of emotion in his eyes. She thought it was hunger.

His voice was terribly low, almost inaudible. He said, "yes."

Doris bent to him immediately, cupping his face in her hands and pressing her mouth to his. It was a simple, mortal gesture, almost chaste, his cool skin against hers. It still sent a thrill through her, a simple baseline pleasure in human contact that made her sigh, soft and sleepy, and relax against him. She was kneeling beside him, and he moved into her touch. It was such a small motion—his chin tipping up, his body subtly tilting forward—that she wasn't even sure he'd done it consciously. But he'd done it, and the pleasure in it opened in her like a flower, flashing through her. She closed her eyes, breath shuddering out, and he drew in her breath like an animal learning your identity through the scent of your air, that which gives you life. Her forehead pressed to his.

He said her name, and his voice sounded like it had in that hospital room, just a little too rough, almost unfamiliar. Her stomach twisted pleasantly, a rush of pleasure and warmth and oh—his fingers were cool, touching the curve of her hip through the thin fabric of her undershirt. The touch dwelled there, raising goose bumps rippling up and down her arms, and didn't move, waiting for her. Waiting for her to make the choice, take the initiative.

Doris drew away.

For a second his face was filled with an emotion that echoed what she'd seen beneath the tree in that brief red-drenched sunset, seconds before she felt his breath touch her throat. Some distant, shadowy savage hunger that he swallowed with effort, leaving him expressionless. She stood up and took a step back, and his face was terribly, rigidly blank and closed off.

She extended her hand, wordlessly, and crooked her fingers, taking another step back towards the divan. The moonlight slipping in through the window glanced off his eyes, painted his face with strange light, but after a moment he rose to follow her and he left his coat behind.

Her fingers moved to the buttons of her shirt, slipping one easily free, and the next. His eyes moved over her face, then trailed downward, following the bared path of tanned skin. It wasn't a look like the ones that Greco and his goons and those like him had given her, though she thought there was lust enough in it, searingly-hot behind his dark eyes. There was a quiet focus that wasn't so much about lust for when he could get his hands on her but a simple fascination with the bare skin revealed with each breath.

She finished the last button and let the shirt slide off of her shoulder, looking up at him. His eyes moved up again, almost leisurely, moving over her skin like a caress; she shivered, hard, and bit into her lip. His stillness told her he was still waiting for her lead "Sit," she suggested, her voice soft and slightly unsteady.

Without a word, he obeyed, dropping down on the divan.

She let her shirt slide down her arms, baring the golden curve of her hips, the light cotton pants sliding low. Her face was still, her lower lip caught between her teeth; the empty blackness of his eyes glittered, suddenly and unexpectedly harsh. Dark hair escaping from the loose sleeping braid curling damply at the nape of her neck, Doris let the shirt fall to the ground. Her hand trailed across her stomach, a light grazing caress, before her fingers folded over the drawstring of her pants. Face utterly intent, she crossed the floor to him.

D's face tipped up, expressionless. She saw his throat move, and that one tiny signal nearly made her knees go weak. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders as she bent, loosed from its flimsy ties, and the thick length touched his shoulder. His face tipped up toward her and a dizzying flicker on emotion too fast for her to properly interpret crossed his face.

One white hand rose, slowly, and touched her side, grazing the arch of her ribs and soft weight of her breast. His thumb slid over the aureole to her nipple and she shuddered, planting a hand on the divan's frame to brace herself.

"Kiss me?" She suggested, voice velvet-low and soft. His eyes slid half closed and he caught the back of her neck, curving his fingers there, and drew her down to him. Her voice was a tiny ragged moan, lost in the warming touch of his mouth, and his lips parted against hers, her tongue sliding against the dormant threat of his teeth.

Doris thought that she could drown in that kiss, let it swallow her down; maybe she could spend all night kissing him and not care, not need anything else. But the rough cotton of her pants brushed against her inner thigh and suddenly she wanted them off, and now.

She slid backwards, away from him, onto the balls of her feet. She drew the drawstring loose and let the pants slide down her legs, baring sleek hard muscle, faint traceries of scars. Human fragility, human weakness, but his eyes dwelled on her skin and he traced one line, a sharp slanting claw mark, up her thigh and against the crease of hip and pelvis, leaving the line of the scar to move down into the softly curling dark hair.

Her breath came in sharply, came out on a soft whimper, an unsteady sound of need. And then she was straddling him, her legs spread over his thighs. He'd pulled her down so fast she was a little dizzy, but she cupped his face between her hands and kissed him greedily, hungrily, her teeth catching on his lower lip, fingers carding through his hair and her hands sliding back, linked behind his neck.

"Doris," he said, pulling back enough for his breath to slide across her flushed skin. His hand shifted, one cupping her hip, the left fisted, the wrist leaning awkwardly against the curve of her waist.

She hummed, a low sliding note, and lifted his hand, leaning back. She kissed the strong wrist, the curve of bone, trailing her mouth up over his knuckles, the warm wet flash of her tongue sliding over his cool skin, lingering on his fingers as she carefully unfolded them. He made a sound low in his throat and she kissed, lightly, the inside base of his fingers—callused, but more fragile skin between. Skin moved against her lower lip, restless like the face was pushing against the inside of his palm and he was holding it in. It had to be able to come out on its own, or it never would have been able to save his life; dead men rarely call for help. Her lips trailed down over that moving surface and the stirring paused, but the grazing kiss was gone in an instant and she leaned forward, kissed D with a light teasing brush of lips. "It's all right," she said. And it was, bizarrely enough. She couldn't argue that there hadn't been an instinctual lurch of horror at the sheer strangeness of someone else's conscious in your body, but Doris had long since gotten the hang of taking things in stride as they came. If she hadn't she never would have lived this long.

D moved into her kiss, sudden and graceful, arching into her touch. She lost hold of his hand, her hands on his shoulders, fingers digging in as the kiss turned harder, fiercer, almost violent. Her body tightened, a harsh warmth tightening in her stomach, drawing fingers of searing heat down her spine and between her shoulder blades, all her nerve endings coming alive. She gasped, tearing her mouth away for air, his mouth trailing along her jaw and then her throat, at the throbbing pulse. Her voice was small, lost, a thready cry of pure need, and her hips jolted when he fastened onto the skin and sucked.

Oh that's going to be subtle tomorrow, some distant part of her mind thought. The rest really, really didn't care.

His hands trailed up her back, tracing the bones of her shoulders, the arch of her spine; his palm opened, startling her, and then a leisurely line of wet heat drew up her back. She hissed and bucked against him, legs loose and hips curving open, rocking forward to get close but barred by the way he sat against the back of the divan, her knees pressing back and holding her too far away.

He kissed the corner of her jaw, found her mouth again, open and panting, damp and swollen lips. She kissed him back, sweet and hot and hungry, and slid her fingertips inside the neck of his shirt, tracing the solid line of his collarbone, hard steel-dense bone. The thick tumbling darkness of her hair surrounded them both and he closed his left fist again, pressing it to the small of her back. She folded her legs, coiling her body flexibly, and he moved forward with just a shift of his hips and oh that was just perfect, that was lovely, and the sound that came from her was low and incoherent, an animal sound of pure pleasure.

Her hands moved under his shirt, dropping to his pants and rucking up the fabric as her eyes lingered on the revealed glimpses of skin, the promise in that line of hard muscle, the dark fold of cloth against the strong line of his side. She undid the buckle on his pants with deft, quick movements and he twisted his left hand in her hair, away from her skin, and kissed her again, hard.

Her mind fogged over and her fingers fumbled. Muttering an imprecation she finally got it loose, twisted the belt through the loops and kept kissing him, letting him guide her where he wanted her, his hand in her hair and his fingers, ghost-light, on her hip. She rose slightly on her knees and then suddenly three things happened at once: she had her hands wrapped around him, he jerked against the couch with a low, growl, and his fangs were there and she nearly sliced her tongue open. As it was, suddenly the taste of her blood was between them, mingling with their breath and saliva, sliding over both of their tongues.

Abruptly he didn't feel human at all—his skin was heating but he felt like carved ivory, like stone and sleek metal, and a chill like the breath of the grave trailed down her neck. She drew back, just slightly—his hand convulsed in her hair—and brushed her lips across his, probably smearing red over his mouth. Her eyes fluttered shut, and his grip tightened, and she pressed her face against his throat, mouthed down the line of pronounced tendons, and closed her mouth over his own pulse, dimmer than a human's would be, biting delicately.

He shuddered hard and something resembling human warmth leached back into his limbs, just that hint of movement making her breath catch. "Doris," he murmured, as though awakening from a dream.

She slid down over him suddenly and fast, her body clenching tight, and his hips slammed up against hers. For a second she was almost too full, a mingling of raw thundering pleasure laced with a red hint of pain, twisting in her until a scream spilled out of her throat, her head arching back.

His eyes were closed, and he'd bitten into his lower lip so hard he'd drawn blood, trickling down from his lip.

Before more than a sliver of dark could appear between his eyelashes she was kissing him, not caring about the coppery tang of blood or the damp smear of it between their mouths and chins. Doris kissed him, and for a long moment they were almost entirely still against one another, just her hands slowly dragging up the fabric of his shirt, splaying over his ribs, reading his skin through her fingertips. She rocked her hips in slow gradual movements, tempting, and his eyes were wide open now and fixed on her.

It was disorienting and difficult to focus on someone so close, her vision blurring. So she drew back, regretfully leaving the kiss, and moved against him while she held his gaze; at first slowly, softly, each sleek movement leading into the next. The hand on her hip firmed, shifted her, and suddenly the long stroke of flesh changed in a way that send a white-hot shock of pleasure through her nerve endings. Doris choked out a cry and drove herself down over him, eyes fluttering.

She anchored herself against him—the tug of her hair, coiled through his fingers, growing heat and thickness of his body against her, the sleek ladder of his ribs beneath her fingers. And beyond that, she let the heat roll her under and slide her away, mouthing his name as she gave it free reign.

Somewhere in the night she realized she was sprawled against his side, head pillowed on the tangled mass of her hair, his coat drawn over her. She rolled drowsily, and as she pressed her face to his neck she felt the weight of his arm around her.

Doris smiled and slept.

She was sleeping curled on the floor when the touch of cool wind brushed her cheek and she came awake in pieces. First the sense of touch, grazing her cheek with a cool whisper of wake up. Something's off. Then smell, fresh air tickling at her senses, the heavy laden trace of rain and unearthed dirt. Hearing keyed in, the too-clear patter of faint misting rain and then sight, focusing on the inside of her eyelids, darkness.

Doris cracked her eyelids, her fingers moving slightly. She was laying facing the divan, its shadow over her cheek. She moved her arm slowly, fingers grazing the rough weave of the divan, feeling her hair fallen over her cheek, uncoiling loosely over her shoulder. She could feel D's body at her back. She kept her body deliberately relaxed, but she felt herself slowly tensing in fragile increments, preparing for movement. She couldn't hear them and she couldn't see them beneath her eyelashes, but she knew a stranger was moving across the floor, approaching her.

She shifted, her breath sighing out, her hand falling lightly under the divan. Her fingers curled around the handle of her whip. She didn't know whether it was air being displaced or simply gut-deep Hunter's instinct, but she knew where they were. And in a moment they would be where she needed them to be.

Now.

She rolled into a crouch and left the floor in one smooth leap. He wasn't looking at her at all, she realized in the heartbeat as the whip lashed out, a lightning-flash of black. But he turned in an incredibly swift flicker of movement, and she caught a glimpse of white face, corpse-pale hand, and then he was holding the end of the whip. Doris dropped and rolled and came up, fluid, and as he began to follow her movement, she drove her foot into his solar plexus, her whole body uncoiling to put force behind the blow.

She sacrificed the whip and rolled away, her shoulder under her, keeping her head down as she bounced to her feet. He tossed the whip and came for her, and she felt a bolt of sheer horror as she saw the flash of white fang at the corners of his mouth. Shit, no. Doris was not trained for fighting vampires, especially bare-handed. She gritted her teeth and leapt back, clearing the divan and landing on the balls of her feet ready to fight, and when he would have followed there was a flash of silver that almost burned her eyes.

She stumbled backward, slapped for the light switch, and found the room suddenly flooded with light. The Noble, tall and pale and gaunt with white skin and sunken, haunted eyes, choked on the mouthful of blood that burst at his lips and slid down his chin, his hand fumbling down and clamping down on the blade that impaled his shoulder, pinning him neatly against the wall.

D stood, his whole body gracefully inclined along the line of the sword in a smooth economical lunge. His eyes were huge and dark in the sharp yellow light and the gracefully aristocratic bones of his face, lent a feral edge by the hard line of his mouth. She stood there, breathing hard with her hand on the light switch—the whip coiled on the ground like the sleek tail of an animal—and realized the whole thing had happened nearly in seconds, only a heartbeat. "D?" She made it a question, her eyes flicking to her whip. The rest of her weapons were also beneath the divan, and she didn't want to upset the fragile balance of stillness in the room until she was absolutely certain that it would be of use to her.

"Wait—" The vampire choked. "Wait—I have—"

"D," she said, more urgent.

"I—called you here—”

That got a moment's silence from them both. Her first thought was you must be insane. Her second, examining the sharpness of his bones and the hollow desperation in his eyes, was a sweep of dawning certainty. She propped her hands on her hips, eyes flashing to her whip again. "D," she said again, voice flat.

The sword slid free of the vampire's flesh. While the man—or did he even qualify?—doubled over, coughing out mouthfuls of blood onto the carpet, D didn't sheath his sword, but stood waiting, blood dripping off of the gleaming end. "I hired you—for myself," the vampire gasped out and then as though afraid D—or Doris, for that matter—would take it as a cue to do something drastic, he rushed out, "but first, I need your help."

Well. Doris looked at D, fairly sure her eyebrows were up around her hairline. His dark eyes flashed toward her, then away. Tamping down the urge to ask him not to bleed on the carpet—Hunters, or those that trained with Hunters got used to blood pretty quick but generally tried not to advertise it in polite company—she tracked around the divan. D moved subtly, keeping him at sword point and allowing her to fetch her whip while still outside of arm's length. She immediately felt more secure, despite the fact that it hadn't done her much good the first time around.

D gazed at him, face completely unreadable; she moved back, letting him take control of the situation and keep the vampire's attention on him. The Noble's eyes kept flicking to her so she circled behind him, constantly dividing his attention as his eyes twitched between them. This was not an experienced member of the Nobility. He seemed edgy, almost buzzing with nervous energy while at the same time looking sick and starved.

Doris was sure she'd been in worse situations, but as it always was, it was hard to focus on them in the moment. She didn't like the way the vampire's focus kept moving to her, no matter how she exploited it; there was too much of an edge of hunger there, strange and ragged.

His feet were bloody, which just added to the whole experience. The rug would never be the same. She felt a bubble of near-hysterical laughter rise up in her throat at the mere thought.

"What is it, exactly, that you need my help for?" D's voice was flat and uncompromising.

The vampire swallowed audibly, throat working. "I need to kill—"

She must have made some tiny movement, some wary involuntary twitch, because both pairs of eyes flicked to her. She shook her head minutely at D and he returned his full attention to the vampire, who had more difficulty tearing his eyes away from her throat.

"I need to—" He hunched over suddenly, dropping to ground and folding against his knees. The brittle, savage tenseness to his frame raised the hairs on the back of her neck. "I have to kill it," he said raggedly. "The one that did this to me. Before they take my wife."

Goddamnit.

Doris skirted them, knelt behind the divan to retrieve the sheath and holster for her gun and spear. She’d wrapped herself in the loose undershirt when she first crawled off the divan, but she fetched her pants now and buckled the leather over her thighs, securing them firmly and backing away from the vampire as she buttoned her shirt. She eyed the dark fall of D's coat in the corner, wishing for her own coat, and felt the tension in the room thicken and hum between them, sharpening each breath.

"D?" She asked. She meant, do you intend to kill him? She didn’t think he would, but he was perfectly capable of being nerve wracking as he decided.

D's mouth smoothed and hardened into a thin line. He straightened fully and moved to smoothly clean the sword, his body moving as easily as though he was not paying very little attention to the vampire crouched in the middle of the room. She grimaced faintly, coiling the whip with deft, automatic movements. Doris was not nearly so willing to even pretend to pay attention to anything else with a hungry vampire in the room.

That bone-deep instinctive fear prickled down her spine consistently. Somehow, without quite noticing, she'd overcome that with D but it still reared its ugly head with other Nobility; she was far from immune to the base human terror that they had, she suspected, been programmed to hold. And a vampire was far too dangerous for a human—she couldn’t have taken the case, and wouldn’t have been asked. But a dhampir—a dhampir of D’s caliber was better suited.

“Will you help me?” The vampire’s fingers scrabbled at the floor, voice dead and flat. The hairs on the back of her neck were already raised and prickling; the skin down her spine almost twitched at the icy chill that traced between her shoulder blades, an animal sixth sense squealing run. run. run. The thick, unearthly chill of vampire nearly vibrated in the air.

D sheathed his sword, expressionless.

“While you employ me,” he said, “there will be no feeding on humans. I’ll kill you if I find otherwise, understand?”

The vampire’s stark, cadaverous face remained blank for a moment, as if he didn’t quite remember how to work the muscles of his face to display emotion—or was simply struggling to find the appropriate emotion that was least likely to get him killed. In the end he simply nodded. “I understand.”

“Does he need to stay here?” Doris asked, intruding on the conversation for the first time. While she would’ve cut the vampire down if she could’ve, and she wouldn’t hesitate even now to hurt him to defend herself, she felt a lurch of pity. She remembered the Doctor, and his perversity after the change; this man must have had incredible willpower to overcome the psychological effects of the change.

They both looked at her.

“No,” the man said. D’s face turned, expressionless, to study him as he hunched over as though cold. “No, staying inside the town is too…”

Tempting, she mentally finished while her skin gave a passable attempt at crawling off of her back from the sheer disquiet. She’d never tried to carry on a conversation with a vampire like this, or even witness one; D was frightening enough when he lapsed, and the inhuman aura thickening the air made her struggle to keep her breathing even and slow.

She slanted a questioning look at D. He was hardly known for his great trust in vampires. But after a moment he said only, "then get out."

The vampire was gone in a shivering lash of black, out through the window in a rush of rain-scented air and the patter of droplets. She crossed the room to shove the glass down, asking as she went, "how will you know if he breaks his word?"

"I'll smell it on him," he said briefly. Doris finally pushed it all the way down, old wood meeting damp and rain-warped wood with a softer sound than she liked.

Putting aside thoughts of the house's maintenance, she turned and leaned back on the windowsill. "What can I do to help?"

He looked up at her, and for a brief second he was perfectly still. She wondered what he saw, what he was thinking to study her so intently. His sword was still in his hand, his heavy dark coat on the floor and hat put aside. His face was bare and she studied the features that she'd become familiar with a long time ago, and that she somehow still remembered so clearly. His dark eyes were curiously tranquil as he took her in, as though some knowledge was settling in.

"Do you know of any inhabitants that would fit the criteria?" His tone was back to being brusque.

Doris shook her head. "No. Those that I'm familiar with are usually the ones I'm working with, and that's in daylight; but in all the chaos, any odd behavior exhibited by a human under thrall wouldn't necessarily be remarked upon as quickly as usual. I'm not familiar with any rumours about new Nobility in the region; the last one they had trouble with has been gone for almost a year, and he took his victim with him. She wasn't married, either. So—" She gave a palms-up shrug. "—the whole thing's a bit atypical anyway, isn't it? They don't usually pay attention to the spouse of their target, and if he was the target he wouldn't really be wanderin' around, would he?"

One corner of his mouth twitched up. "A fair deduction," he acknowledged. She rolled her eyes at him, but in a friendly way.

"Do you have answers?" She asked.

D was silent for a moment. "No," he murmured.

"I guess the Nobility ain't so set in their ways after all," she murmured, turning to look out the window at the heavy clouds that gathered low and sullen above the town and its disaster area. "This'll be interesting, I guess," she concluded, and sighed.

"You don't need to be involved in this," he said suddenly. Doris turned back to stare at him, surprised. "If the townspeople knew you were aiding me—not to mention him—"

"I've gone through it before and I'll survive it again," she said, matter-of-fact. She crossed the room to lean a knee on the divan and unbuckle her weapons. If she wanted to catch a few more hours of sleep—and you learned to get what you could on the Frontier, be it sleep or food or company—she wouldn't be wearing these while she did it. Her older equipment had gotten near-destroyed in an acid bath that had caught her supplies and nearly caught her, and the new stuff wasn't quite broken in yet. "If nothing else, I'm in it for the woman." She looked up at D, straightening as she gathered the leather in her hands. "I'm not going to back down," she said quietly, "and I'm not going to stand by while a town gets preyed on. I'm not built for it, and I don't care if that's how things go out here. If Dan was here, he'd be rarin' to go out and do some rescuin'."

D smiled very faintly. "True," he said.

She grinned back, and then her smile faded. Quietly, she said, "the divan won't fit us both."

Still holding his sword, he watched her with a curious kind of patience, waiting.

She took in a deep breath. "We could share a bed, instead," she finished simply. She might as well get to work on exorcising ghosts, one way or another.

He crossed the room to her with a soundless tread and startling speed, his fingers sliding through her hair. She tipped her face up, keeping her eyes open even as he grew closer and more unfocused. The kiss was light, almost not a touch at all, and it made her smile at the feather light softness of it. "Lead the way," he said when he released her, and she tucked her weapons under her arm and wound her fingers through his, pulling him into the hall.

She had just turned to the stairs when the door abruptly shuddering under a thunderous rain of knocking. Doris jerked around, her whip in her hand without a second thought; they'd released each other simultaneously to grasp their weapons, and when she glanced at D he shifted to allow her to precede him to the door. She thought briefly and longingly of her coat in the room she'd left behind—the garments she was wearing were underclothes for a reason—but the hammering resumed and she gave a hiss of irritated breath and dumped her weapons briefly on a table in the hall, selecting the spear before moving quickly toward the door. It would be easier to use in close quarters than the whip, and easier to warn with, rather than kill with, than the gun.

When she jerked open the door, the electronic alert settling at her presence, she was left glaring up at the foreman. "Can I help you?" She demanded as he rocked back on his heels, startled. The big, rough man jerked his hat off, clapping it to his chest, and averted his eyes. "Apologies, miss, but we've come for a certain item."

Doris didn't comprehend his behavior for a moment until she realized that the damp, chill air had not only plastered her light underclothes to her body but made it very clear that she wore nothing underneath due to her body's reaction to the cold. She narrowed her eyes at him further, watching the flush climb up his cheeks. Doris could be as modest as the next gal, but in times of duress she would gladly use drastic measures; she was still the same young woman that had shamelessly used her own naked body as a weapon in her broad arsenal. "Well, Mr. Morson," she said frostily, "perhaps you will give a lady a moment to attire herself properly before you explain yourself."

He looked wretched, but stuck to his guns. "No, ma'am, we've got out orders. And you could get rid of it, after all, or do somethin' with it if we let you—"

"With what?" She demanded, planting her hand on her hip and tapping her spear meaningfully on her thigh.

"Well—Madam Bailey's Key."

She didn't need further explanations. The weighty emphasis took care of it. "Why on earth would I have her Key?" She asked, but her voice was softer, startled out of her antagonism.

The Key was a tool, and a damn important one. Only three of them existed, and they were closely guarded—as well as the identities of those who possessed them in town. They'd been found along with an extremely dangerous piece of Nobility technology, reserved for defense of the village against the direst of circumstances—it hadn't even been used against the last Nobility, simply because it was so powerful it was not applicable to the situation.

And, of course, because Frontier villages were all too ready to sacrifice their womenfolk to rid themselves of trouble. Doris scowled again, the sudden bitterness of her thoughts showing and almost surprising even her.

Either he didn't see her sudden dark expression or simply tactfully ignored it, because he explained, "apparently Madam Bailey willed it to you. The good doctor said—"

"Oh," she said, surprised. "The box? Yes, Doctor Oreson delivered that last evening."

There was an awkward pause. "He said you picked it up, came to the office."

There was a space of startled silence in which full blown unease slid down her spine. "No," Doris said slowly. "He came here. My boarder can confirm it." She stepped back to allow a clear line of sight to D, who inclined his head briefly, and the foreman used the chance to quickly step inside.

"Be as that may be, could we see the item in question?" He took off his hat and glanced around uncertainly, a burly man in a rain-slicked water repellent coat. She didn't offer to take his coat, just turned and retraced her path to the living room. The box was still lying on the divan, and she picked it up, turning it uncertainly over in her hands.

"I haven't unsealed it yet," she offered to the foreman, an awkward sort of peace gesture at his apologetic expression. His face brightened.

"Well, that should clear things up," he said, and took it from her. His big hands were transformed, moving with a sudden delicate grace over the hinges and lid. "Yup, it's sealed all right. Okay, if you could open it up, you can take any personal effects that might be in there and we'll bring the key back to the mayor."

She sat down on the divan and accepted it from him, setting it on her knees. "It doesn't seem like Emma to send something like this to me," she said.

The foreman nodded. "It doesn't, all right, but maybe she made a mistake. Old age, and all that."

Emma Bailey had possessed a mind like a steel trap and everyone knew it, but Doris politely refrained from contradicting him. It rarely turned out well, with men in positions of authority, so she tended to only do it when it would gain her something. In this case, she had the sneaking feeling that remaining on his good side would be more likely to bear palatable fruit.

Complicated sensors softly beeped and whirred as she moved her thumb in careful lines of the patterns on the lid of the box. Madam Bailey had indeed programmed Doris's DNA signature in, because after a moment, with a soft hiss, an electronic voice said sweetly, "new signature. Accepted." The lid began rising more ponderously than one would expect of such a small container. Doris stared into it, struck utterly speechless, and before she could say anything the foreman picked it up and turned it toward him.

His face fell. It would have been almost comical if it hadn't been so drastically serious. "It's empty," he said, stunned.

Doris met D's eyes, behind him. _Son of a bitch_ , she thought, and his eyes narrowed slightly.


	2. Chapter 2

Thirty minutes later she was standing in the mayor's office, fully dressed and armed, trying not to have a shouting match with the damn man. "It was sealed!" She reminded him hotly, hands planted on her hips. "Your man can confirm that. I didn't take anything from the damn box, because I couldn't have!"

The mayor's face was flushed with fury. "Well how do you explain this, then, Miss Lang?"

"I don't explain it! I don't know how to explain it! It's not my damn job to explain it!" She paused, swallowing back the furious torrent of words and blowing out a harsh breath, her tone gentler. "Have you appointed a new sheriff, yet?"

The mayor slumped back in his chair and wiped his rounded face with a handkerchief. "No," he said grimly. Doris pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead, trying to will the throbbing headache in her temples away. Of all the times when disaster had to strike, it had to be now. Of course it had to be now.

"Well, it must have happened before her death," Doris said, rubbing at her temples and trying to collect her scattered thoughts. She should be down helping people dig their belongings out of the mud, aching with exertion and hip-deep in stinking, sucking wet earth and refuse. Not up here, with a mystery altogether too ominous for her liking. "Because otherwise..."

The mayor nodded. He'd been sneaking suspicious glances at D since they all entered the room, but hadn't actually said anything. He'd been too preoccupied with the box, and D hadn't said a thing, just let them slug it out; standing in the corner, taking in everything, utterly and darkly watchful.

Doris moved restlessly away from the big desk in the center of the cold, barren room. There was a filing cabinet against the wall, and a bookshelf with a shelf missing and mud still clinging to its feet, only haphazardly decorated with a few tomes. The mayor looked almost grey at the edges with exhaustion, and she didn't blame him. She wouldn't want a thief to be in position to a Key, either. Didn't.

"Well—" She shrugged, palms-up. "Whose hands did the box pass through? Do we even have any way to tell?" In the chaos, likely not. She was very carefully trying not to point the obvious finger, even though her bubbling resentment against Doctor Oreson was reaching dangerous peaks. She disliked his involvement in this almost as much as she disliked the man himself.

"Damn," she whispered, pinching the bridge of her nose. There was the faintest whisper of movement that she knew without looking was D, and she shook her head minutely, stopping him. He shouldn't get involved. More than peripheral attention on him could prove troublesome, and she'd had a hard enough time keeping him safe when he wasn't an active potential threat.

D could take care of himself, of course. But she'd dragged him into this particular mess, and she wasn't going to let it cause him extra trouble.

The mayor poured himself a glass of filtered water from the pitcher on the table and nudged a second glass toward her, offering. She gratefully accepted it; the handle of the pitcher was chipped, a hard thing to do to the synthetic material, and the water tasted flat and near-metallic, sterilized—but it tasted wonderful for all that. She hadn't realized how much she needed a cool drink of water until it was sliding down her throat.

"Thanks," she said, wiping a hand across her mouth. He was drinking his own in long, steady pulls, throat working, and when he was finished he picked up his handkerchief again to wipe his face. The foreman, sitting in a chair at the wall and turning his hat around and around anxiously in his hands, shook his head at the offer.

"Well, we can hardly just sit around and see if and when it gets triggered, and to whose advantage." She set her glass down and planted her hands on her hips. "You've gotta have something to help find the damn thing."

"Yes, but half of our equipment was wiped out in the 'slide, and the rest is working erratically at best. We'd have to wait until it's all been combed through to see what we still have, what's functional out of what's been buried, what's scrap, what we can rig to work reliably..."

"In other words, this is just perfect timing," Doris said aloud, sourly.

The mayor gave her a weak smile. "Just about. Listen, Miss Lang, I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt, but I can't have you leaving, understand?"

The benefit of the doubt, my ass. It's plain as day somebody tried to frame me. Doris gritted her teeth and endured the condescending tone. "Of course," she murmured politely. And why would I leave the town anyway, even if I had the key? It would hardly do me any damn good outside of it.

"Then I'll talk to you later," he said, and leaned back in his chair, swiveling to face the foreman. Doris didn't need a second hint.

"Ass," she muttered under her breath as she clattered down the stairs, deliberately loud in her temper. "As if I'm any less capable of hunting down a damn thief just because I'm a woman. I got the same damn patronization when I was bringing in supplies to save his ass."

D fell into step beside her as they hit the street. Recalling herself, she glanced up at him. "You've got to do your own detective work, don't you?"

"You think they're unconnected?"

She blinked. "Well—" It wasn't like it hadn't occurred to her, happening in such close succession as the events were, but she couldn't suss out a real connection. Nobility might have created the weapons of mass destruction, but if it was going after the man's wife, it was unlikely to feel the need for such broad harm. And the other vampire wanted to save his wife, not wipe out the town and the surrounding countryside just to get one vampire. "It didn't seem real likely when I thought about it. What about you?"

"I don't see it, either," he answered without hesitation. "But someone's got it out for you."

A flush crawled up her cheeks and she fixed her eyes on the road ahead of her. "I can take care of myself," she said aloud, but D had never contradicted that. And it was good to have him at her back.

"Are you going down to work?"

She laughed, startled and delighted. "Why? Are you going to come haul mud?"

"No," he said. But that only made her laugh harder. She remembered his tireless labour on the farm for her and Dan, but although she wasn't surprised he'd declined to labour for strangers—especially in such a complicated environment to fight in—it brought a warm, unexpected flush of nostalgia.

"Of course not," she agreed, slightly breathlessly after her laughter. She pushed her hair out of her face, craning her neck. "And I'm a bit heavily armed to—"

A sudden lurch of nausea made her stagger, the pounding in her head swelling from a faint stressful headache to a pulsing fist tightening beneath her scalp, hot and intense. "Oh god," she said thinly, and she felt his hands lock over her arms.

"Doris," he said, and cold command in his voice made her shudder and jerk, trying to answer him. She pushed at him, trying to get clear as stomach acid rushed up her throat, but when he loosened his grip she started to fall. On her knees, she threw up almost nothing—the result of her scant meals—her vision swimming in bright and dark streamers, loosing contact with the world. Her stomach tightened again, convulsively.

She panted something incoherent and his cool fingers slid over the back of her neck, feeling heavenly.

From somewhere far away, she heard the hoarse little voice say flatly, "poison."

D cursed. The guttural obscenity, incongruous in that low, lovely voice, was the last thing she heard before the pain and darkness swept her under.

She recognized the hazy glossy fever dreams from a fierce illness she'd had in childhood, when the whole world seemed a little too bright and intense and the pain came and went in waves. The solid darkness of his coat, the white flash of his skin; only his cool hand, pressed to her forehead, seemed to anchor her to reality. She pushed against it, needing that touch, and D said something very softly to her, the cadence of his voice queerly comforting for all of its flat control.

She thought she heard other voices—a doctor's voice, and others, babbling, something about a man—but they receded, and the door beeped worriedly as they passed, acknowledging both her presence and her current state. He stripped her clothes away with clinical efficiency and she felt clean sheets beneath her, faintly musty, as though they and the air in the room hadn't been used in a while.

"Sleep," the hoarse little voice advised, sounding more sardonically amused than anything else. "We'll take care of you."

"...lech," she murmured, almost affectionately in her fever dream. Before she slipped under again, she heard it laughing, and thought she felt D's cool lips on her forehead.

Doris woke to the surprisingly warm weight of D's body against her, heavy blankets above her and the softness of his skin under her cheek. She stared up at the ceiling, taking in the speckled surface, the shadows cast by the curtains and the moonlight. It had stopped raining, and she must have slept for a long time. She felt a liquid weakness in her limbs, but all things considered she was in far better shape than she had any right to be.

"Someone poisoned me," she said aloud, outraged.

D moved beside her. She had no doubt he had been awake since the first moment her breathing shifted and maybe before, and when she rolled to face him, their bodies pressing together, his dark eyes were trained on her face. He didn't respond, at least not verbally; their hair was mingled, running together in a thick dark blanket, and when she moved further she could feel the tug of someone's weight—hers, D's, who knew—against her scalp.

"And you saved me," she said quietly. He didn't answer that either, perhaps considering the statement superfluous, and she relaxed her head on the pillow. "Not quite what I'd figured," she said aloud. "Being in bed with you, I mean."

The faintest hint of a smile might have crossed his face. She grinned up at him, then her smile vanished. "The water," she said. "It must have been the water. Does that mean...?"

"The mayor's dead," D confirmed.

"Damnit!" She sat up, blanket falling away, suddenly furious. "It was on the desk when we came in. So what—it was someone who knew I'd be visiting, or I was just collateral? Was he just collateral. Damn it all. D—" and she turned to him suddenly, "do you think it was the Doctor?"

"Do you?"

"It's a damn tempting prospect," she admitted. "But there's gotta be more than one person involved in this whole mess, right? Why would the doc want the mayor dead, anyway? And wouldn't the doc delivering the box to me be too obvious?" Unless he wanted to make sure it got delivered, unless he thought she'd open it right away and then it would just be her word that it had been empty from the start, unless he wanted to make it seem like she had some sort of vendetta... "And why the hell would he lie, anyway, if he wasn't involved?"

"I'd lay odds he's involved," D's indifferent-sounding voice came from the side of the bed. He was dressing and pulling on his coat. Her own clothes were missing—not surprising, considering they'd probably been covered with sweat and vomit—but he'd brought her back into the room. She slipped out of bed and padded across the room to tug it open. Her weapons were laid out neatly on the bedside table.

"Yeah," she said, muffled as she pulled an undershirt over her head. She wanted the whip in her hand so bad her fingers almost itched for it. "I don't like the whole mess. And two vampires in town?"

"What are they feeding on?" D murmured.

"Well, we're not even sure of the number of survivors." She let a heavier over shirt fall over her head, draping around her hips. "And there were people working up in the mines, or in the distillery. They could be picking off any number of people." Vampires could employ nightmarish stealth, of course, when their pride didn't make them ostentatious. She paused, adding unselfconsciously. "Or the original, anyway. The new one's probably quit. You're scary when you wanna be."

"Good to know," D said. He was fully dressed and expressionless, but there was a hint of amusement to his tone that hadn't been there before.

"So either he just doesn't give a damn if it gets figured out, or—" She sat on the edge of the bed to tug up her socks, and also to hide the tremble of fatigue in her legs. She could feel the softer dehydration headache pulsing in raw, tender temples. "What? He's innocent? He's playing a needlessly complicated game? He's just insane? I'll ask around about a missing family—he didn't mention children, anyway—but a lot of people died, and like I said—we're still counting. It won't be the most reliable of information. Going to go do your own thing?"

He nodded after a near-imperceptible pause. "And you?"

She sat back on the bed and evaluated her physical status. Wobbly and achy. She'd survive, but she didn't like the odds of a fight. "I might stay in and look through some files. They shipped some stuff up here that used to belong to the inhabitants, and among them was an inventory, and some logs going way back, nearly to the town's founding. I want to know more about the damn weapon other than 'it's big and makes a big boom.'" Doris stood, bracing herself on the bedstead, and tipped her chin up to look at him as he crossed the room. "Listen, D—" She halted abruptly, almost surprised at herself. After a moment, awkward, she said, "take care of yourself."

He bent to her briefly, and—not a kiss, which she half was and half wasn't expecting, but a slow inhale at her hairline, down to her cheek. "I will," he said, and she turned her head and caught his mouth in a kiss, quick and sure, her teeth catching at his lower lip.

"Good luck," she said under her breath, and he nodded, still close enough to be breathing in her skin. Then he turned and was gone, and she reached for her whip, businesslike despite the flush on her cheeks and the quick flutter of her pulse. He could probably make a dead woman swoon, she thought, and cracked a rueful grin at the morbidly humorous turn of her own thoughts.

Two hours later she sat back, propped her heels on the lower rung of the stool, and stared at the yellowing papers spread in front of her, their edges curled and their script archaic and stilted.

So far she'd found out the founder's name, his wife's name, his children and grandchildren's names, how much milk their cows had produced in the first month, how many crops had been struck by blight in the first two years, and the minor fact that the much-vaunted weapon had killed forty men when the miners first came upon it below the ground. 'Vaporized' some parts and 'melted' others, apparently, occasionally into the melted parts of other men. Luckily their brains seemed to have been the first things to vaporize, so they probably didn't feel the melting.

Sometimes the instinctual, gut-deep horror of the Nobility seemed so utterly justified not even by themselves, but by everything they'd done. She pulled a heavy hide-bound tome off the kitchen counter and into her lap, cracking it open and blowing the dust away from her with her nose covered.

That done, it bared the founder's signature—again—and the date. It seemed she'd incidentally skipped forward a few volumes, but she turned the pages anyway, experimentally. Her mind was beginning to numb as the pattern cycled and recycled mundane details periodically interspersed with graphic descriptions of horrific incidents, from monsters to machinery.

The third page in said, my father is dead.

Doris blinked. Then she closed the book. She reordered the papers she'd gone through, filed them neatly back into their labeled containers, and selected the following stack of books, checking each one to find a more feminine signature and hand before tucking them under her arm. Once she'd reordered the remainder she hefted the original tome and headed upstairs, briefly returning for her lamp.

Sitting on the bed that still held traces of their mingled scent, she pushed the window slightly open to let more air in, nudged the lamp she'd placed on the bedside table a little closer and spread the book over her lap.

My father is dead, the graceful handwriting declared. And I have succeeded him.

I cannot destroy the weapon. For all the cursed ill luck it has brought upon us, many of the villagers still regard it with a sort of religious awe. It is their talisman, and should I publicly set myself against it—even if I could devise the means to its end—I would be setting myself against them as well, in their eyes. But I can destroy the keys.

There were twelve of them. Now there are three; one for myself, one for my sister, and one for my girl child, all of them keyed to our grasp. The others I have gone to great length to eliminate, with success. The beast beneath our floors is hungry, but I shall feed it no longer. I shall control it—and what terrible lengths it will go to, to rebel—but I will allow no new man to be sacrificed on the altar of its maw. Had I the chance, I would insert the key and turn it the wrong way, and its great ember-bright heart might slow to a stop, should I be lucky. But I cannot. I go below with two guards, always, and barely trust even the strength of my will against its blandishments.

Truly, the Nobility indulges its wanton cruelty by leaving such creatures amongst us. I must remain strong. The thought of all it could and has wreaked, loose upon the surface of the earth...it is not to be borne.

Doris slowly lowered the book to her lap, staring sightlessly at the wall. Alive. It was alive? Not merely some hulking thing of gears and pistons and incomprehensible engines? She rubbed her palm against her thigh, deeply unsettled. And this woman—she looked down at the page, at the quick signature—this Aya, she'd been...what? Trying to save the town? Herself?

She wondered if anyone in the more recent generations had even seen the 'weapon.' If perhaps there had been a different reason why it hadn't been used against the Nobility. She wondered if it could even be reached any more. Aya had certainly sounded determined to prevent exposure to it. Could she have closed it off? And why had the key been stolen?

Did someone know?

Did someone know that it was a living thing, and not just an indiscriminately destructive object? A living thing, after all, could be controlled. Could be directed. Had they found out in the aftermath of the flood, when these records were no longer sealed? If so, then they had to have stolen the key for a reason. There had to be some further clue in the books, some information.

She returned to reading with renewed purpose. But for months, Aya proved maddeningly evasive, providing detailed and intelligent reports on trading, production, working, population and even household maintenance, often with small wry comments about the people in her charge that made Doris wish she'd known her when she was alive. When she wrote that after the Missus Farnshaw's widowing she'd turned to managing the gardens about her husband's home, she added in a small script godsbless, let's hope it doesn't eat her. When adding that disciplinary action had been taken against the young sons of Mister Borley, necessitating service in the dam reconstruction, she'd added, had it been my choice alone, I'd have hung them from the eaves by the seat of their pants, the rascals. Fortunately, my sense of civic responsibility guides my hand more wisely. They were much more entertaining than her father's recounting, but not useful.

Then Doris reached an entry that began with, I fear I weaken.

Outside the door, a floorboard creaked.

She froze, her breath catching in her throat, and her hand was on the handle of her whip in a heartbeat. She was sitting in bed, the blankets tangled warmly around her legs, her body still weak with the aftermath of the poison. If they opened the door, she could kill them with the whip, but if they just came through it—

It would be more difficult.

She carefully set the book aside and gathered her legs under her, reaching for her gun. She saw a shadow beneath the door and groped for her gun; when she reached it she lifted it and aimed, staring unblinkingly at the wooden panels. "Identify yourself," she called, voice clear and sharp, "or I'll fire."

There was a quick caught breath, and a rush of movement, like a thunderous winter gale had suddenly blown through the hall. Doris almost fired from the shock of the roaring noise, the door shaking on its hinges. When it stopped, cut off as suddenly as it had begun, the shadow was gone. Faint creaks ran through the house, as if it was resettling itself, and she realized she was holding her breath and crouching on the bed, staring at the door as if it would give her answers.

...what the hell was that?

She pushed the book out of her way and dropped to the floor, moving softly. She pulled the door open quickly, standing aside, but the hall was definitively empty, though every ornament or painting or small piece of furniture was knocked askew or thrown to the ground. Still holding her gun at ready, Doris scanned ceiling and walls both and then stepped out into the hall, looking around her in amazement.

"What on earth...?" She said aloud.

She quickly canvassed the house from top to bottom, pacing along the floorboards and rug in turn, but there was no other sign of an intruder except for the faintest of smells that kept lightly—teasingly—tugging at her senses. Finally she retreated to their room once more, setting the gun on the side table with the safety on and resettling herself with the book in her lap.

I fear I weaken, Aya wrote. For now I go alone.

Truly, in the depths of this pit, life must be hellish. The creature speaks sweet words, and sharp ones, and I find myself unwillingly gripped by its debate, its conversation—its regard. I only now realize how insidious it has been when it speaks to me of neglect and I realize missing one day is indeed surprising—for I have visited it each day for some months now. It has none but I to entertain it, and the great focus of such a monster is indeed a fascinating thing. It is intoxicating to find yourself the object of greatest importance in such a terrible creature's world.

But I am its jailer. It is to be expected, that its efforts should be given to convincing me alone. And from it many lies may easily issue. It desires freedom—and has never fooled either of us that it does not desire my blood in vengeance. I should attend to my husband and my people. I am a fool.

Doris cradled the book in her hands, beyond confused. Debate? Further entries held further reports on every day life. Her sister, Vera, was wed. Her daughter turned thirteen. Her husband began to take trading trips out of town, and going hunting and trapping in the mountains. Distance was apparent between them.

Aya became pregnant.

For a time, subtly reading between the lines on the entries, this seemed to close the rift between she and her husband. He gave up a degree of his trips to outside. In a small, vaguely baffling note at the bottom of one page, Aya noted that she had not visited the weapon since she had begun to show. She gave no reason, scratching over a whole line of text that Doris couldn't read no matter how she tried.

Then she found a whole entry devoted to the matter, the text quick and almost slashing, as though the writer was angry.

It decrees that, as its jailer, I have a responsibility to see to it. To entertain it. This murderous beast bids me come and go, but regularly, or it shall show its displeasure. And how am I to argue? The horror that I felt when feeling the rumbles beneath the earth—my first thought was that the cave could collapse. Not for its security, but for its health. Fool. Fool. It was not anything near so benign as an earth quake, and I am trapped in a new bargain, with nothing near so benign as the devil for my soul.

How can such a thing have expressions? Emotions? And yet I would swear there was surprise, there, when he saw what I carried within me. I am wed, I told him, of course I am wed. I have a life beyond you. Was he surprised? I could not tell any longer.

I do have a life beyond him. Bittersweet and unfulfilling as it may be.

Doris fingered the page thoughtfully. She was nearly to the end of this book. Had Aya even realized she'd switched to using 'he?'

She almost felt like a voyeur. And she saw why they kept the records sealed. They were practically diaries. The intimacy of it made her uneasy.

No one in town now knew. From the diaries, it was unsurprising; she got the feeling that Aya and her contemporaries had sworn something of a pact of silence. It would have taken a mere couple of generations for the knowledge to effectively vanish. She turned the page, found a concerned reflection upon the recent frequency of mist-devils, and closed the book.

The next book was completely filled with utterly mundane reports; Doris flipped through it in vague disbelief before resorting to the next, which began in a different hand.

Doris gripped the edge of the book tighter, pulled it snugly into her lap, and began to read. Her fears were assuaged within the first few sentences. With my mother ill, it read in a young, round hand, I have briefly shouldered the task of putting down for the records the town's recent trials and tribulations. With the mayor incapacitated—and her youngest child, I fear, lost—chaos has descended, hopefully to be brief. Earthquakes have recently disturbed the town, to add to our distress in these troubled times. They grow in magnitude by day, and though my father seems to have a plan of action that agitates him, he will not share it. We have been instructed to move my mother as little as possible, and she remains unconscious yet; my prayers are all for her. Just this eve aid arrived from Symberg, and rations are being distributed. I do not understand why my father will not explain; if my mother and he had a backup plan for just such a crisis, why does he not share it with the town, that we might better prepare for the eventuality?

Nora

The rest of the book was blank.

The next book in chronological order was dated some ten years in the future, and signed by a man; he spoke nothing of the events passed, not exactly surprising since ten years were gone. She skimmed the book as thoroughly and speedily as she could, combing through the last two for some explanation. All she gained was a brief mention of a 'Nora' who had moved into the mountains, and whose departure was shrouded in dark tidings. A murder was alluded to, but whether it was by Nora or for Nora or unrelated to Nora was left a mystery.

There had to be missing books.

Aya's book, perhaps had been abandoned. But there had to be records earlier than ten years after the event. Records were usually kept meticulously for small towns, as long as they had a competent mayor. (No one in Ransylva, for example, had been surprised to discover that the records the previous mayor had left behind were a complete mess.) They had proved vital in the past.

Doris stacked her books, retrieved her gun and, securing her whip at her waist, carried them downstairs. Keeping her gun on her and at ready at all times meant that the books required two trips, and she settled the last of them on the counter and stepped back to survey her domain.

She wasn't even sure exactly what warned her—something as insignificant as disturbed air, maybe—but in a heartbeat she'd whirled, and had her gun pointed at—

—D's face.

"D," she said, startled and relieved. Then she said sharply, "earlier we had an intruder. Can you—smell them, or whatever it is you've got at your disposal?"

"I'll check," he said, and vanished from the doorway.

"I was upstairs," she called after him, "and it was outside the door."

She hopped up onto the stool and pulled a sheaf of papers she'd temporarily dismissed as unpromising earlier into her lap. It largely involved taxes, bills and other money records, but she skimmed it quickly to the end before D reentered the room.

"Vampire," he said, eyes narrowed.

Doris stared at him, her hands stalling on the papers. "Vampire," she said, and then didn't understand why she was stunned.

But it sounded so...

"Young," she said aloud. At his look, she clarified. "I said something—heard somebody outside—and—it—gasped. It sounded like a kid."

He was silent for a moment, his face unreadable as he considered the information. "A child," he said quietly, as though disturbed.

"Bit of a vile trick," his left hand rasped. Doris glanced down at it reflexively as D's hand closed sharply into a fist.

"And you?" She asked after a second, hesitating. "Did you find anything useful?"

D approached the counter, studying the papers spread there. "I may have," he said. "And these?"

"Town records." She tapped the stack of books she'd set aside, the ones containing Aya's writing. "These are the ones that have the interesting stuff. D, this weapon is alive. And conscious." She hesitated, studying him. "You're not surprised?"

"I suspected as I went through the town today," he answered briefly. Knowing D, who was monosyllabic on his most sociable days, this was practically verbose. He definitely wasn't used to working with a partner, Doris thought, and smothered a tired, involuntary smile. "You said there were workers in the mines?"

"But there are older mines," she said. "Closed off. Reportedly for structural insecurity, and no one's been in there for—oh, ages. It must be underground, don't you think? Aya—the mayor that wrote about it the most—said it could cause earthquakes. She said it did so when bored."

His voice was terse. "It's likely. What else did she say?"

"She said that inserting a key and turning it a certain way would kill it...that the townspeople nearly worshiped it at one time...that she talked to it. Debated with it." She pulled one of the heavy volumes toward her and laid it in her lap, idly flipping pages. "Then her daughter writes an entry about how she's been injured and may have lost her child—she was pregnant—and that earthquakes were occurring, and the rest of the relevant book is blank. I think there's some records missing, because I've gone over them and the next one that shows up is ten years later. Bit of a jump."

"Thorough," D observed.

"No kidding. Except if they were being thorough, why didn't they get rid of all of them? Unless it got hidden in the archives or something…"

He reached out with one long, pale hand and lifted a heavy, dust-smeared book. Her handprints had disturbed the dust in patterns, but remnants still clung. She coughed briefly, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth with a grimace, and followed his movements with curious eyes.

"There had to be a reason," he murmured, opening it.

"On whose part?" She asked simply.

His eyes flicked towards her, dark and impenetrable, and he returned his attention to his volume. Doris looked back at the book in her lap. "So why did someone steal the key?" She frowned at the cover, preoccupied. "And how much do they know, anyway? Do they know where it is? In that case, we have some pieces of the puzzle but they have the most essential one. I hate mysteries." She blew out a sigh. "I suppose you're used to them, though."

"Yes," he answered.

And what happened to Aya, anyway? She rubbed her thumb over the leather binding. Okay. Posit scenario. Dr. Oreson steals the key, diverts attention to me for when it gets discovered, and poisons me because I can point the finger or the mayor to remove the highest authority or both of us for the combined aforementioned purposes. He's intending to find the creature, use the key, and...what?

"But what the hell are they planning on using it for?" She said aloud. D looked up at her. "There are no big towns near here, and the mobile city that passes close won't be here for another half-year. No enemies that I can think of, no purpose for it. Moving it doesn't seem feasible. With something that powerful, you can't set it off too close to yourself. Long range targets. So people could notice and get close enough to stop him pretty quick."

"Him?"

Doris waved a hand. "The thief, sorry. Of whatever gender." Giving away my bias. "And what about the vampire, anyway? Did you get any leads for him? On him?"

"Not much."

"So what do we have, anyway?" She complained, frustrated. “A bunch more questions on our hands.”

“An opponent,” he answered aloud. “Somebody showed up.”

“Answers, enemies…” She was muttering half under her breath. “As long as it gets us somewhere, I guess it’s something.”

A hint of humour shadowed his face. "Are you being optimistic? I can't tell."

Doris grinned and leaned over to playfully slug his arm. "I'm working with what I've got."

"I see."

She slipped to the ground, gathering up an armful of books. "I'm gonna stack these. And then I might go back to bed. I want to be out on the town again tomorrow, and I'm feelin' a little wobbly again. Might as well grab some rest." Her fingers tightened on the books as she thought of the poison, and her lips thinned. She knew drastic measures were required on the Frontier, but poisoning a human opponent, anonymous and silent, was cowardly. Low. Traitorous.

Doris had to have somewhat unorthodox views of what was loyalty and what was betrayal to the human race—she would have been in something of a bind concerning her feelings for D otherwise—but this was like agreeing to a duel and then sneaking up and stabbing them in the back. This was dirty. And it was fucking pissing her off.

"Someone tried to poison me," she said through her teeth. "And I mean to make them regret it."

"They will," D said, flat and monotone. A wash of cold air swept up her spine, tightening the skin there as goose bumps rose; a primal wash of all-too-human terror crawled under her skin. She bit into her lower lip and turned her head deliberately to look at him.

"I'm going to make them regret it," she reminded him, keeping her tone fierce as she faced down the carven, carnivorous mask that had mere seconds before been a familiar face. A flare of real emotion, hot and perhaps unwise, welled up in her throat, pulling together words she thought he'd understand. "They're mine to hunt, D."

The vampire turned to look at her, and though her breath stopped and squeezed down in her chest, she faced him defiantly, her chin jerking up.

After a moment, he almost smiled. It was the most frightening thing she'd seen in her life, and Doris had faced down a lot.

"Leave the vampire to me."

"Deal," she said, and suddenly her heart was pounding in her ears, when she hadn't quite noticed it before. Doris licked her lips, adjusting her armful of books. There were crates in the hall where she intended to put them for safe keeping, keyed to her personal code for the moment. After the last few minutes of her life, she didn't even know where the courage for the next words came from. "D, are you coming to bed?"

D watched her for a moment with an almost predatory stillness entirely unlike his previous and terrifying quiet, eyes intent and dark. She realized a flush was burning across her cheeks; it was hardly embarrassment at all.

"Yes," he said.

She smiled.

Upstairs, undressing was an adventure.

With the archival records safely packed away, in the quiet shadows of the bedroom—she'd paused on the stairs to let her pupils open and he didn't need even the bare light the very low lamp by the bed provided—she dragged her sweater over her head. It caught at the bottom of her shirt, briefly baring a glimpse of golden skin and dense muscle. She knew that there wasn't much fragile about her, but D didn't seem to care. He stood by the bed, hands empty and turned against his coat, watching her with a vast, waiting darkness in his eyes.

She draped the sweater over the board at the foot of the bed and began unbuttoning the shirt with light little flicks of her fingers. She didn't make it a slow, teasing show but she wasn't businesslike, the shirt giving peek-a-boo promises with each relinquished fastening. It fell together, showing a stripe of warm tanned skin between her breasts and to her waist, bisected in two places by the faintest silvery hints of old scars. She looked up at him, meeting his eyes, and shrugged the shirt over one shoulder, and then the next. At first he never looked away from her eyes, the stare hot enough to raise the hairs on the back of her neck, and then he let them trail over her; still carrying her weapons, hair unraveling from its braid in wild dark strands, her breasts bare and rising in quick breaths.

He reached out and his fingers traced the curve of her ribs, following it to her side. His palm flattened against her skin, maybe feeling the steady thump of her heart, maybe feeling the rushing blood. His skin was cool against hers.

Keeping her eyes locked on his as his gaze returned to her face, she reached for her belt.

She woke when the sun was just peeking into view.

Just near dawn, and she had an armful of mysteries, no real answers, a murdered man—two, really—and an accusation of theft on her hands. Doris sat in bed and breathed deeply, drinking in the clear air of the morning, the darker, fainter scent of the dhampir—no longer in bed next to her—and putting her hand briefly on the comfort of the whip at her side.

What now?

The answer was simple. Get up and do something about it.

She didn't know precisely what to do, but Doris had had the solid ground jerked out from under her too many times before to be duly impressed by one more rendition. She'd get out into the town, and then, well—she'd take it from there. The foreman knew, presumably, what had happened; she thought she remembered his voice, in the thrashing fog she'd been embroiled in after she'd first been poisoned in. He would have been able to tell people she couldn't come help, and why. Regardless, she thought she'd stop by the site and make her excuses, ask if they'd found anything exciting. Then she wanted to do some exploring of her own around the abandoned buildings in the more treacherous but not actively buried part of town.

And then—

"—I'm going to the mines today," she said aloud to D.

From the doorway, he looked at her. He was carrying a mug of coffee in one hand, and he offered it to her. "Then I'm coming with you."

Startled and pleased, she jumped lightly off the bed and crossed the room to accept it, naked but for the tangled mess of her hair. "Alright. I have some stuff to do beforehand, so if you do too, we could meet at the mayor's office and head off together." She named a time, and he inclined his head briefly in acknowledgement.

She took a sip of coffee, grinned at him over the edge, and turned to find her clothes. "It's delicious."

At the most major site of excavation, she found the most familiar faces, not to mention the foreman. His face brightened dramatically when he saw her and a ragged call of greeting went up, so her expectations were confirmed. He had shared the information.

"I can hardly believe you're all right," he said in amazement, offering his hand. "The mayor was dead in fifteen minutes."

"I had somehow who knew how to treat it," she said, smiling politely and shaking his hand firmly. "I was lucky. Find anything?"

"Not much. It's down to dreg-work," he said, and a deep, carven shadow overtook his face. "All we're getting is furniture and corpses."

She released his hand, not surprised but feeling the plunge in her own spirits. "Yeah. I guess I figured as much. And what with the..." She gestured expressively. "Anything been figured out?"

He shook his head. "Everything's in so much chaos, all we've been able to scrape together is a real rudimentary investigation."

She nodded. "I'm going to poke around today, I think. Anyone seen anything unusual?"

"Yeah, actually." His weathered face wore a deeply disturbed expression. "People keep saying they're seein' children—in the weirdest of places. The first couple people I brushed off as a bit of grief-crazy, but then people who are about as stable as you can get where an' when we are started seein' em."

"More than one?" Doris felt her skin prickle.

"Well—" He paused, frowning. "Most of 'em gave roughly the same description. Usually been too far away to see clearly. I guess if'n the child was real, there's prob'ly only one. But it's gotta be so much fever dreams, or somethin' worse. Ain't no way a human kid could have gotten in the places she's gotten."

"She." There was a puzzle piece niggling at the back of her mind, but she couldn't quite reach it. She knew she didn't like it, though.

“Wearin’ a dress, anyway.” He gave her a look that was keener than she liked. “Something wrong?” When that failed to garner a response beyond a brisk shake of her head, he amended, “remind you of something?”

She looked up at him. There wasn't more than a brief second's pause before she replied, "nothing I can put my finger on." That was the god's honest truth—something was niggling, whispering softly in the back of her head, but she couldn't have said exactly what. Whatever it was, she had the ominous feeling it was something important, even something key; the piece of information just hadn't fit quite yet into the big picture.

He cleared his throat, rocking back on his heels. "Okay. You stayin' for long?"

"Probably not," she admitted. "I'd stay and help, but—"

"Excavations won't mean a thing anyway, if that weapon goes off. There won't be a thing to excavate, or a soul left to do it."

They parted with a brief, friendly nod.

And then to the abandoned hollows of the older part of town.

Doris moved carefully here, not always certain of her footing. The mud was slick and treacherous, giving quick and easily beneath her feet. She wasn't even sure what she was looking for, honestly; but she had the feeling that if she were to find it anywhere, it would be here in the shadows and dilapidated corners of the old buildings, empty of inhabitants but full of lives long past. She moved briefly into one of the houses, boards creaking under her feet, and found abandoned furniture, pictures askew on the walls, a table nailed down in the dining room with all the chairs around it knocked down.

She didn't chance going upstairs to investigate the bedrooms. The boards already moaned and bowed beneath her light tread, and there were treacherous spots here and there. She retreated to the porch, examining the one broken window and the dark, forbidding gapes of the rest, then returned to the street.

It was very empty here. The sky was flat slate-gray, featureless. The mud was grey where it wasn't nearly black, and the houses had long since lost any colour they might have possessed on walls or trimming, bleached by sun and rain and wind. They gaped at her like blank, slack faces with dark windows and sagging porches, many of them listing ominously. The air echoed with the whistle of the breeze, none of the town's sounds intruding.

Doris picked a direction nearly at random and moved between two houses, seeing the ragged, destroyed remnants of a fence. She never would have been able to stand living here, a hairsbreadth from your neighbors. The events in her life so far had cultivated a great appreciation for the value of privacy.

But with no people, it felt like the houses themselves might be alive, lurching over and peering down at her. It made her edgy, especially considering the number of broken windows—it would be child's play for an opponent, especially one that wasn't human, to leap out at her from the myriad of hiding spots just in her immediate vicinity. But it wasn't until she strayed into what had been a small open space, centered by a brief platform and surrounded by the empty houses, that the hairs on the back of her neck rose with true foreboding—hunter's instinct.

Doris froze halfway across the empty space, her hand tightening on her whip. When nothing made a movement or otherwise revealed itself to her she crossed swiftly to the platform, leapt up to it, and turned in slow circles to examine her surroundings. Only the gray sky, empty buildings and encroaching black mud greeted her gaze. She paced in a slow circle around the platform, wood creaking under her feet, memorizing each space with her eyes. Waiting. Patience was often a vital component of a hunter's job, and she'd learned not only the skills from her father but the tricks of the trade clearing her land from threats.

And on her third turn she halted abruptly, facing the smallest house off to the eastern corner of the open square. She stood, deliberately relaxing her hand on the handle of her whip, and gazed up at the window, empty of glass and frame.

A small white figure stood there. She was framed in the window, only visible from the waist up, but Doris was sure she wore a dress. She could see very little but wet dark hair and the shadows of dark eyes. The little girl laced her hands deliberately in front of her, head cocking to her side, and watched Doris without otherwise moving.

Quietly, Doris said, "did you come looking for me?"

She had no doubt the words would reach the figure's ears.

For a moment her statement simply wasn't acknowledged. As though merely an apparition, or trick of the light, the girl stayed there perfectly still as a picture. Not even the shadowed hint of eyes flickered—as far as Doris could tell, she wasn't even blinking.

And then she was standing in front of Doris, merely ten feet away on the ground, a figure in white with her pale feet buried in the black mud, hands still clasped, head still tipped slightly sideways.

Doris realized she had the gun in her hand as she came to rest at the opposite side of the platform; she'd taken a single great leapt backwards, putting a good added distance between them. The little girl's eyes widened when she saw the gun and she took a stumbling, wholly ungraceful step back, heels skidding in the mud. As she turned to run, Doris called, "wait!"

She froze.

"I'm sorry," Doris said very calmly and softly, "you startled me."

Her head turned very slowly and uncertainly to peek over her shoulder, as though gauging Doris's sincerity. Her eyes were, even as they'd seemed all the way across the square, tragic dark shadows in a small white face with dark sad brows, tilted up gently by a trick of genetics. She'd been born with a mourning face, and never had the chance to grow into the stubborn little chin and the wide mouth that hinted lightly at smiling even now. Her hair was wet, plastered to her thin cheeks and fragile shoulders, but her white dress was dry and fine, light like cotton.

She wasn't human. Nothing could have been clearer. But at the same time, she wasn't like any vampire Doris had ever met. Her small face was full of fear and uncertainty, when it couldn't have been easier to have simply leapt upon Doris when she entered the square. As a human, Doris was little match for a vampire especially when taken by surprise.

"You came to see me," Doris said patiently, slowly reholstering her gun even though every instinct screamed no! "Didn't you? That was you, wasn't it? I'm sorry if I startled you."

The little girl wavered, uncertain, eyes wide and wavering. "You had her things," she said in a slow, high voice.

Doris blinked. "Whose things?"

"You had her things," she repeated, ponderously and sadly. "You had her..."

The books? "Aya's things?" Doris said softly, coaxing. "Are you talking about the books?"

"Mama," the little vampire said sadly, and began to cry as she turned away, wandering slowly across the empty space, slipping occasionally in the mud.

Waves of hot and cold ran through Doris. It went against every survival instinct she had to even consider following a vampire, especially out of the open. But she didn't have to worry; when the little girl fetched up against the porch of one of the houses she turned this way and that, piteously confused, and then came slowly and meanderingly back, still crying softly.

Pity lurched in Doris's heart, a maternal instinct that reached across the species boundary, even as questions clamoured at her tongue. She was far too young to be Nora, who had been Aya's youngest child. Could the infant have survived the accident? And if she had, how was she a vampire now?

She slipped down from the platform, kneeling but not approaching; studying the little girl revealed that, beneath the small fists rubbing at her eyes, her distress had revealed her fangs, sharp little points at the corner of her small mouth. "What's your name?" She asked very gently.

The little girl blinked wetly at her, uncomprehending, hands lowering slightly.

"Your name? What do people call you?"

"No one calls me," she said in a small voice, her hands slowly clasping in front of her again. "The tall man called me a monster," she added, her expression showing no particular sign of heightened distress at the revelation. Doris wondered if she didn't care or simply didn't understand what the word meant, and then wondered how the girl had learned to speak at all.

Perhaps the Noble that had turned her had taught her, and left gaps in her education.

All the vampires she had met—even those that had possessed the kindest, softest disposition of anyone she'd ever known previously—had acquired a rapacious, soulless lust and hunger. Had she escaped it because she was a child?

"Do you spend all your time here?" She asked, as gently as possible.

The little girl shook her head. "No. I go home."

"Where is 'home?'"

She hesitated, face scrunching, and then looked down at her feet. "Under."

"Under—"

"In the dark."

Intuition prickled on her skin again. In the mines? Opting not to ask on the off chance that she'd either spook or just completely mystify her, she inquired, "are you alone under?"

She shook her head simply.

"Do you have a lot of people under?"

"No," she said. "Only two, but mama always sleeps."

Doris had heard enough euphemisms from grief-stricken, uncomprehending children to make suspicion trickle up, accompanied by horror. "And the other? Do they always sleep, too?"

"No," she said readily, and relief surged. "But sometimes he sleeps, and lets me sleep with him. He's very warm." She stretched out her arms. "And thiiiiiis big."

In any other place and time, the scene might have made Doris smother affectionate laughter, and the urge now was so incongruous it jarred her into standing and moving slightly back. "Alright," she began.

But before she could continue the child moved in one of those eerie, blink-blur flickers of movement, turning. Across the square, silhouetted by the dark shape of the muddy hill and broken down buildings, D stood, a tall figure in black. His face was expressionless as he gazed at the two of them, but his hand was near the hilt of his sword.

"D, no!" She shouted. He stilled, white face turning to her. "She's only—"

The sharp retort of a gunshot rang through the air and the little child gave a tortured, animal squeal of pain. The same rushing, tearing gale-wind ripped suddenly through the square. It nearly yanked Doris off the ground but D hit her and they crashed to the ground, the wind pulling and howling at them in thwarted fury. Then it died as suddenly as it came. The cessation was so fast for a second she thought she'd just gone deaf until D, kneeling over her, said her name.

She blinked up at him. "I'm okay," she said thinly, dragging in deep breaths of air. He straightened and she followed suit before he could offer his hand, scanning the buildings. She wasn't quite sure what emotion was slowly and surely bubbling up in her, but she knew it wouldn't be a pleasant one. "Who...?"

She let the words trail off as she spotted a tell tale white shape in a doctor's coat at the edge of the clearing. She started to push past D, the emotion solidifying instantly into hard-edged red hot rage, but he caught her arm. "She was a vampire," he murmured, close to her ear. "Remember that."

Doris drew in a deep breath, not pulling against his grip even as it softened. He was right. Ripping the doctor a new one for shooting the Nobility would only give him the most dangerous kind of ammunition. Ammunition she couldn't afford to hand him, since he was trying to frame her for robbery.

"She was a child," she said, softly but forcefully, turning to look D in the face. He held her gaze for a moment, taking in her desperate need for him to understand. "Just a child, D. A hurt one." One she suspected was not quite sane in the human sense, but a child nonetheless. "She didn't touch me."

He released her, his fingers trailing cool and brief over her. "He won't care."

But D did. Enough, at least, to understand. It steadied her. She nodded, sucked in a mouthful of chill air laden with the scent of wet earth and rotting wood, and started across the square at a more controlled pace, steady and slow. "Doctor Oreson," she said, not bothering to make her tone pleasant as she approached. He could hardly expect that, even if he hadn't just shot a child. "Telling tall tales isn't enough for you, I see. You're following me around now?" You bastard, she thought with vengeful malice.

He met her hostile glare with a thin, satisfied smile. "Cavorting with the Nobility, Miss Lang?"

She blinked at him, gracefully feigning surprise. "I was speaking with a lost child, Doctor."

He gave a bark of laughter. "A lost child!" A sharp gesture of his hand swept the square as though to indicate the hurricane winds that had torn through.

Doris shrugged. "I'm just a farm girl, doctor," she said, mild and unassuming. "I'm sure you'll forgive me if I don't possess your, ah, keen instincts."

He narrowed his eyes, trying to read her tone, but it was perfectly bland and he had publicly derided her as just what she was innocently declaring herself to be. If he acted suspicious now, he would be undermining his own statements, and Doris didn't plan to be here long enough to give him a chance to use her words against her.

It worked. He gave a broad smile instead and said, "well then, shouldn't you be thanking me?"

Doris gave a one-shouldered shrug, pursing her lips and giving him a faint, veiled smile. "Oh, I'm sure D would have handled it just fine," she said. "So. What are you doing here?"

He leaned his gun against his shoulders—as she'd suspected, projectiles instead of laser—and gave her a brief nod. "I came to pick you two up."

She blinked. "Pick us up?"

"We've cobbled together something of a council," he said calmly. "And you're being called to stand trial."

Doris stared at him, honestly astonished. "For what?"

"Theft," he said succinctly, raising his eyebrows in mock-surprise.

"On hearsay and one man's word." She felt her own expression turn unpleasant, baring her teeth in a smile. "I sure hope you're ready to be up there with me."

"I?" He affected even greater surprise. "I'm the hero. I found the key, Miss Lang. It's a bit of a mystery how you managed it, of course," he said in a kindly tone, "but I'm sure we'll clear all that up during the trial."

Some pieces fell into place. He didn't want to use it—he wanted it to be a stepping stone into the mayor's seat, and had found the opportunity by using her, the outsider and stranger—the already 'tainted' woman. Fury sparked somewhere deep and ugly, but Doris had better control over herself than that. "I don't have time for this," Doris said under her breath. Aloud she said, "fine," and gave him a serene smile. "You'll excuse me when I have to leave early. I have work to do."

His eyes narrowed at her composure, but he didn't say a word, just turned on his heel.

She turned to find D and discovered he was approaching her with an unhurried step, undoubtedly having heard the whole conversation. "Well?" She said to him, tilting her face up. "What do you think? He's dirty as a hog on a hot day."

"I doubt we will be welcome much longer." He sounded sardonic. "But I've still got a job to do."

She nodded, hooking her thumbs into her belt loops. "I'm sorry I dragged you into my mess."

"It's both our mess," he answered briefly.

Ahead of them, Doctor Oreson called, "your presence is requested too, sir."

They exchanged looks without thinking—D's expression immaculately closed off with only the spine-crawling trickle of eerie chill coming off of him betraying any aggravation, and hers a tight scowl—and began walking after him. D adjusted his stride to hers and she used a steady but unhurried pace over the mud. The doctor came hurrying back to them, expression irritated and his pant legs smeared with black mud almost up to his knees. He must have slipped a few times on the way down.

"Hurry up," he said. Doris gave him a brilliant smile, envisioning his nose broken in her mind's eye. This was not an environment where it was good thinking or desperate enough to threaten the law or what passed for it, like she'd done an age and a day ago with their mayor and her whip. But damn, it was tempting. She would have given a lot, in that moment, to be able to snip off the tip of his tongue. He flushed at her smile, unaware of the bloodthirsty turn her thoughts had taken, and cleared his throat. "That is, we shouldn't dawdle."

"Of course not," she murmured, and opened up her stride. Doris was a Frontier girl, fit and hardy; where she didn't ride, she walked, especially on hunts that required more stealth than speed. She could utilize a ground-eating lope that carried her deceptively swiftly over the ground. D kept pace with his longer legs and almost before Doctor Oreson had realized that the shift in her steps had added speed, he was left behind.

Small, petty pleasures—but what the hell.

"Was it her?" She asked D in an undertone. The icy wind bit at her cheeks, numbed her nose. As unpleasant as the 'trial' promised to be, she'd be glad to be out of the cold, which had wormed its way to her bones with a not entirely physical chill. "Did she make him a vampire?"

D was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "yes."

She thought about the empty confusion in the Noble child's eyes, the gaunt male vampire, his dead flat voice. "What about the wife?" she whispered, more to herself than anything else.

D said nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

The building they'd chosen to convene in had been an inn once, and it was one of the few buildings where the heating still worked almost perfectly. The wash of warm air hitting her face made her sigh, blood tingling back to her extremities, and she rubbed at her wind-cut cheeks and sidestepped the splinters of a sofa over the damp, mud-smeared and once expensive carpet.

Beside her, D took in the room. Pretty much all of it, from ceiling to furnishings, was constructed of heavy wood and plastic, reinforced. It wasn't meant to be pretty, though some efforts had been made to give it warmth and approachability; the wood was now neglected but had once been polished smooth and dark, good money had been spent on furnishings, carpet and lighting. Now families huddled here and there, a constant soft hum of voices filling the big room. There was a woman behind the desk that Doris recognized. She'd been Madam Bailey's assistant and something of a second in command, and she was bent over papers now in the front desk. Presumably she'd had to both take over Madam Bailey's duties and expand them at once.

She looked up at them as they approached; she was a handsome middle aged woman with thick dark hair, prematurely threaded with gray, and large eyes behind angular glasses. Her hair was swept up behind her head, wisps coming free, and she tapped her pen against the desk when Doctor Oreson leaned his elbows on the front counter and leaned in. "We're here for the trial," he said, not bothering to keep his voice down.

The woman—Maro, Doris remembered—gave his elbows an extremely pointed look, resulting in a hasty removal, and then smiled a smile that mostly resembled a smile solely through the baring of teeth. "Are you," she said, barely glancing at Doris. The heat of her dislike was palpable, and dangerous. This wasn't even something as simple as dislike; that was anger, and intent. And Frontier women were usually just as dangerous as the men. Maro wanted him dead, and suddenly Doris felt a little more cheerful about the prospect of having to potentially leave the town without retribution.

She was certain the good doctor would try for more than simple exile, but she wasn't going to lay down and take it, and besides—she had D on her side.

Maro straightened; she'd kicked off her shoes and folded her legs under her, and now she swung them down again. "It'll be a moment," she said, rifling through papers.

Doctor Oreson straightened, frowning. "They should be waiting for me."

Maro didn't look up. "There were other items on the agenda. You took so long that they began."

Doctor Oreson muttered a curse and headed swiftly for the backroom. Doris followed him immediately, trailing him swiftly through the lower hall and to adjoining doors with blacked out windows. He pushed one open, hard, and was into an open space. He balked, briefly, as though startled by the number of men and women in attendance, and Doris walked past him at a pace that looked more leisurely than it was. He got himself together in a heartbeat and came after her, but she was already walking before him between the chairs.

"You asked for me?" She asked.

An older woman frowned at her. Mrs. Renshawe, tall and stately if with even more lines carved in her face by the recent crisis. "Miss Lang," she said, and then nodded. "Some time ago."

"I came as soon as I knew," Doris explained politely. "It took a bit of time for your messenger to find me; I was investigating the abandoned quarter in the hopes of discovering some kind of fugitive."

The man beside Mrs. Renshawe raised an eyebrow, raking his gaze over her in a familiar dismissive fashion. "Oh?" He inquired. "And did you find a fugitive?"

"No," Doris said, and smiled, all teeth, before they could continue. "I found a Noble."

Gasps rippled up and down the room, echoing in shock. Someone shouted, "no!" Someone closer said in tones of infinite weariness and pain, "after everything else..."

"A child," Doris continued, her tone soft. "At first I thought her a phantom," she added, which was not entirely a lie—it had been her first instinctive thought when she'd seen the pale shape in the window. "And she behaves more like a ghost than a member of the Nobility—disoriented, sad, lacking blood thirst..."

"What," interrupted the man, voice harsh. "What exactly are you trying to say?"

Doris examined his face, evaluating options. What was she trying to say? She wasn't stupid enough to announce that she'd tried to stop someone from killing a Noble. She shrugged one shoulder and spoke before anyone could jump to conclusions—or, worse, before Doctor Oreson could jump in. "That there may be another. This could just be a thrall gone wrong."

She saw some faces crumple with despair, the weight of everything pressing down on them. The first woman that had spoken kept her face iron-calm and still, but she saw the shadows in her eyes that acknowledged the new bit of information. There was another, but was setting the town on his tail a good thing?

She wanted the attention off the little girl, though. And given the chance, Doctor Oreson would have focused it there—chiefly on the little girl's interaction with Doris.

This mess had to be cleaned up. It had to be ended, and decisively, and soon, before too many people got involved. Doris didn't blame her fellow humans for their hatred for and fear of the Nobility, but she wasn't willing to work within the narrow constraints of the worldview they had to take on for survival. She was going to solve this her way.

But first this had to be dealt with. She didn't like the thought of having to deal with vampires and villagers out for her head at once.

"I was trying to investigate when Doctor Oreson shot the vampire," she said. She kept her voice smooth and non-accusatory. "He told me I was needed, so I hurried here."

"Ah. Yes." Mrs. Renshawe folded her hands in front of her and studied Doris, the sheer force of her calm seeming to steady those around her. "Miss Lang, I gave little credence to the claim of theft when it first surfaced, but the good Doctor has assured us that he possesses incontrovertible proof."

And the Doctor stepped forward. His smile was politely restrained, but the sheer venom that snaked through her at the sight of him was chokingly strong. "I do, Madam," he agreed. "And thank you for allowing me to present my case. As the case stood, with my word against hers, no progress could be made, and in our current situation it is pressing indeed to not allow the item to remain at large much longer. So I took it upon myself to carry out my own—investigation."

Doris stared at him, dumb founded, and then realization dawned. "You broke into the house?" She asked, her voice precisely bit out between her teeth. There was nothing there to find, of course—other than the records, and she doubted that he'd paused to peruse—but the flare of invasion startled her. And infuriated her beyond what was wise to let the council see. She shrugged, forcing her shoulders to relax. "There was nothing to find."

"On the contrary," he objected, reaching into his coat. "I can say definitively that at least one of our proble—" He'd swung the lid up—and froze.

There was a long, taut pause. Doris was almost holding her breath; she had no idea what it contained or did not contained, and only a sneaking hope, but by the expression on his face it was nothing good for him. And that, she was willing to bet, was good for her.

"Yes?" Mrs. Renshawe prompted politely. "Do go on, Doctor Oreson."

The colour had drained from his face. "No—I didn't—" He glanced around, scanning the room with hard eyes, and slammed the lid shut. "If you will excuse me," he said curtly, and fled the room.

Doris turned to stare at D, trying to telegraph her question. Did you…? He shook his head once.

Mrs. Renshawe gave a weary sigh. "Well, now that that seemed to have been cleared up for the moment…I would appreciate it, Miss Lang, if you could continue your investigation and bring us all you discover. This is an unwanted addition to the burden even now resting on our shoulders, and we are grateful to have your support during this dire hour." She raised one hand in a graceful gesture. Doris, recognizing a lucky dismissal when she won one, bowed and backed between chairs to reach D.

"The mine?" She asked, soft and terse.

"Let's hurry."

In the foothills, she picked her way through thick, knee-deep mud, splintered wood and broken boughs. D moved light and swift on the surface of the mud, his feet barely dimpling the surface; Doris took a slightly more circuitous route, travelling swiftly over the debris jutting up from the surface. She kept up—with his speed, he could have far outstripped her, but even matching to her pace they moved at a good clip—and it was a fairly short amount of time before she spotted the mouth of the mine yawning dark before them.

The air was clear and sharp, the sky still murky gray, the temperature dropping. It was going on to evening, and Doris clenched her teeth, dropped onto the slippery mud close to the opening, where the jutting rise of rock had shielded the earth slightly.

Every animal instinct she had was screaming in the back of her head, a rattling litany of go back go back go back and she crushed it down, biting into her lower lip. The air was thick and ice-cold with a hard, eerie pressure like the hand of a ghost pressing down on her skin, crushing her inexorably to the ground. There was nothing natural about the air. She knew part of it came from D, and that bolstered her; if you had to go in face to face with something scary as hell, it was good to know you had something else scary on your side.

She drew her gun and held it pointing downward along her thigh; her whip was already in her hand.

“It’s inside,” she murmured—not really needing an answer, feeling the surety beat through her with each pulse of her heart.

D answered anyway. “Yes.”

“D?” Doris tipped her chin up at him, curious. “Think I’m gonna survive this?” She had utter faith that he would. She couldn’t imagine D dying from something like this; she’d thought she’d lost him once, and that had been ugly enough.

“Yes,” he said, and his voice was dark and cold, demanding as the clang of cold iron. It wasn’t a tone that left room for doubt.

“Well,” Doris murmured, feeling a flush rise up on her cheeks as she took the first step into the mines, “aren’t you bossy.”

Down into the belly of the earth. ‘Under’ and in the dark, Doris moved very carefully indeed. D had a small, bright white light that he retrieved from his coat and held out to light that way; she was grateful for it, but simultaneously worried that it would alert—

Well, hell, they were tracking vampires weren’t they? And the Nobility would detect them no matter what she did. Vampires and an unknown weapon, powerful and sentient, that presumably couldn’t move anyway. Stealth was not highest of the list of necessities.

For a brief moment, following D, she wished she had Dan at her back. D’s preternatural senses would detect anything long before it could close enough to strike—most monsters that had truly long-range attacks wouldn’t venture in small closed spaces like this—but she’d begun showing Dan the ropes out on their land when he got good enough. He’d gone away long to learn, but they hadn’t lost their rapport, and when he came home and worked with her again occasionally on visits, it was easy as breathing.

The desire passed. She kept an eye on the darkness, keen attention on her peripheral vision for motion, and kept her gun steady. When D halted abruptly, she followed suit instantly and tracked his line of sight into the darkness, squinting briefly before she acknowledged it wasn't going to do her any good.

Slowly, a small white shape appeared, coalescing out of the surrounding darkness almost reluctantly. It was the little girl, and her white dress was now spattered and soaked with dried blood; she limped, slowly and laboriously. He'd shot her in the leg.

Doris felt a surge of unease. If she was a vampire, she should have healed already. And sure enough, the child was displaying fangs, but she spoke around them as if they weren't there, and the wound, while no longer bleeding and better healed than it should have been judging by the blood splatter, still lingered just above her small, knobby knee, white dress torn away.

"Will you come with me?" The little girl asked Doris wistfully, as though D didn't exist, standing there between them.

Doris fought the urge to glance at him to see if he was as weirded out as she was. He wouldn't let it show on his face, and he had to be just as aware as she was how strange this was. "Come with you where?" She asked, and at the confusion on her face and in her dull, glazed eyes amended, "is your mama down here?"

The small head nodded, up and down.

"Do you want to take me to her?"

Again, a slow nod.

Doris knelt in front of her, a careful distance away, and looked into her face. "Did you bite a man?" She asked, keeping her voice still very soft and calm.

The little girl blinked, slowly, and then rubbed at her face. "I wanted a mama," she said, her voice so small and thin, like a kitten's mewl. "One that doesn't sleep. But he was so angry--he grabbed me," she said. "He hurt me." She opened and closed her mouth, a slow deliberate movement.

It was an accident? Doris felt a lurch of disbelieving pain in her chest, incredulous grief for the lost life. "And the woman?" She continued, steadying her voice. "The mama you wanted?"

The small dark head shook, to the side and back. "She ran," she whispered. "She ran. She's all gone."

Jesus. Doris sat back on her heels, reeling.

The little girl reached out and tugged tremulously on her sleeve, eyes big and pleading. "Come with me?"

She did glance at D now, and found him looking back, but merely for confirmation. "All right," she said gently, "lead the way."

The girl turned and began limping back the way she'd come with visible difficulty, foot dragging. Doris looked at D again, drawing close. "Is she safe?" She breathed, the words barely audible. Vampire hearing might pick them up anyway, but she was hoping the girl wouldn't comprehend.

For a moment he only returned a thick silence, considering the question. "She wouldn't understand to drink if you told her to," she was eventually told.

Satisfied, Doris broke ahead and touched the child's shoulder, kneeling. The little girl vampire turned slowly, bewildered. "Will you let me carry you?" She asked gently.

Trustingly, the small arms lifted. There was an expression of yearning on the small face, but it wasn't the starved, inhuman hunger vampires wore. She suspected it was for something far more mundane; simple human touch. Bracing herself on one knee, she tucked her arm gently under her knees and lifted her. She weighed about the same as a human child might have, and she buried her forehead against Doris's neck, sighing out a long content breath.

D was right. It didn't smell of blood—just ashes, and age, and long-dead memories. Doris's eyes stung suddenly and unexpectedly at the wash of déjà vu——suddenly she saw her father's face in her mind's eye and almost staggered before she shook off the effect. The little vampire hadn't moved to attack; it must have been incidental, merely a side effect without direction.

Doris began walking.

Down into the maze of the tunnels, some ankle-deep in water, some scattered with rubble; these were no longer in use, and a smoky scent slowly began to fill her lungs, creeping in on her senses until suddenly she couldn't breathe without tasting it on her tongue. Occasionally the little girl raised an arm to point and direct her to the mouth of one cave or another, but otherwise she remained silent and content, a small burden not so fragile as she appeared.

She kicked aside a chunk of rock, hearing it clatter off into the shadows. The oppressive darkness was beginning to wear on her, but she gritted her teeth and endured it. She'd worked in far worse conditions than a little darkness, and it took more to—

Her pace slowed abruptly as, at the next turn, she caught sight of the red, flickering shadows of—firelight? Against the wall at the next split at the left turn. Whatever they head been heading for, she was willing to bet they'd just reached it.

"He's very warm. And thiiiiiis big."

Oh, joy. She kept walking after a moment of more careful pace, and reached the intersection in mere moment. Pausing just before the mouth of the next tunnel, she glanced back at D; he was close behind her, dark coat drawn around him, and he met her gaze steadily. Her own singing tension and readiness was echoed more subtly in him, and the air between them nearly vibrated. She broke the stare, nodded sharply, and walked out into the open.

Slightly anticlimactically, there was another short tunnel that opened out into empty space. Doris kept moving, taking in her surroundings; all dampness on the walls was gone, and the heat pressed gently against her skin like an arid hand. In the cavern she was emerging into, for a moment all she could see was the light, radiating from the massive, formless shape that took up the center, the shifting colours of flame. It was mottled with red and orange and yellow, constantly rippling and shimmering, never still and never quite the same.

She wasn't quite sure where she got the sense of movement from the sudden roil of colour, but she retreated several steps very quickly, trying to shift the girl's weight to reach for her gun, and D was suddenly in front of her—blocking her from attack but keeping her line of sight clear.

And sure enough, recognizable features rolled around the side of the shape. First a great, glittering eye with a black knife-slice of pupil, then the broad featureless mass shifted—almost resembling a fire dragon in the first moment, a vaguely human male shape composed of brilliant flames and black ash, then the eye again, then almost the hint of a bird. The changes cycled briefly, touching on shapes she didn't have the time to recognize, and then it settled into the shape of the draconic creature, blinking the slit-pupiled eyes at her, mirrors of the giant one, with flames licking off of its long sinuous neck and gracefully coiled flanks.

So this was the weapon.

Warm? Doris stared at the lashing flames. It's an inferno! But the child in her arms was already squirming, struggling to get down; she knelt carefully and lowered her to the ground, and the little girl limped hastily to the edge of an iron-bound circle gouged deep in the ground, stakes and arcane symbols Doris didn't recognize scribed and embedded in intricate shapes. The little girl stepped carefully over it, wobbling on her wounded knee, and went to curl up in the shadow of the dragon-shape's wing.

The wing fell over her, shielding her from view, and the dragon's head turned slowly to examine them.

So, it purred, and the rumble of its voice vibrated along her bones, rattled in her throat and heart. Its voice was sardonic, and she thought she probably wasn't amiss in thinking she detected more than a hint of subtle poison in its tone. I have visitors, after so long.

Doris blinked, keeping her hands off of her weapons by pure force of will. Aloud, she said, "no one knows you're alive."

A sound tore from it; a deep, grinding rattle that licked flame into the air. After a second, as the sound trembled into the air again, she realized it was laughing.

Of course they don't, it—he?—replied, distant amusement audible in the vibrations of its voice. Much care was taken to erase the specifics of my existence.

Doris worked her throat, licking her lips with a dry tongue. She had a rush of questions, but no answers; finally she blurted, "what's your name?"

Resounding silence fell, like a stone. What purpose could you have, to come here and ask me that? The sibilant whisper snaked across the ground, dangerous.

Doris swallowed hard. "I came to talk," she said. "That's all. And generally when you're talking to someone, you like to have a name to address them with."

The hiss this time was amused, coldly and dangerously so. I have not been named, it replied. Cursed, yes, but not named—not by my creators.

Doris took a leap of faith. "What about by Aya?"

The air went thick, the heat spiking sharply, and then fading before she could cry out. She could hear the ragged gasps of her own breath, and D had taken the worst of the heat wave. She could see his hand on his sword.

She called me monster, it said at last, but there was no censure in its tone, only a vague kind of amusement, even affection, as though it reflected upon an inside joke, or an unorthodox term of endearment. If you have come to speak to me, human child of fragile flesh and blood, then speak.

Any number of questions clamoured at her lips. Does the doctor know you're here - Who has the key - Who are you - who is she - but she chose the last that came to mind, because it was the one that had been with her longest. "What happened," she asked quietly, "to Aya?"

There was a moment of silence, but of a more mundane flavour, and she could hear an echo of crackling, a strange mimicry of the sound of mortal mundane flame.

I will show you, it eventually said mildly, and its shape slowly began to rotate once more, the colours fluidly warping and flickering. Its head turned toward the opposite side of the cavern and Doris exchanged a glance with D, pressed her lips together, and took the lead—as he'd been letting her do this whole encounter. She squinted through the fierce, eye-watering light and wondered why; because this aspect of it was more her case than his? He'd held his hand at her request for the vampire girl child; she couldn't, for that matter, recall diplomacy being much of D's specialty.

And then she saw what it had to show her, and her breathing faltered.

A woman lay on the ground, separated from the stone floor only by a mess of damp, blood-soaked blankets; she was middle aged, her face strongly marked by time and laugh lines; she had a wide, soft mouth that seemed to hint at a weary smile even now, dark brows and closed eyes that seemed almost shadowed by bruises of pain and exhaustion. Her dark hair was threaded with gray, her hands folded over a belly that had a gentle swell—but judging by the heavy stain of blood on the gown between her legs and the blankets, no longer contained a child. She was beautiful, she wasn't breathing, and she was—

"Aya?" Doris asked, her voice sounding strangely breathless with the shock.

The weapon gave a long, painful hiss. It was answer enough.

"...but mama always sleeps."

"Is she dead?" She asked through a tight throat. "She should be long decayed. Even dust."

She is...paused, it replied.

"In stasis," D's low, cool voice said. He crossed the floor and knelt beside her, sweeping her with a critical eye. "Not yet dead, but on the verge of it."

He brought her to me, it said finally. To halt the quakes I spread through the earth. Silence reigned for a long moment. Softer, a hiss overlaying the voice like the rumbling fall of boulders, he said that she might have lived had she not been moved.

Doris took a step closer, examining the woman's form with an eye trained by field dressings. "How soon after she arrived did you place the stasis on her?"

One great eye turned to regard her. ...almost immediately.

She shook her head. "Then he lied. Records showed that they lived pretty close to the mouth of the mine, before the town was quite so big. It wasn't a spinal wound, something that moving could be disastrous to; I doubt moving helped her, but that bleeding would have killed her anyway, and fast."

There was no noise whatsoever in the cavern for a long, torturously extended moment. She blinked and worked her jaw to pop her ears, and then a soft sigh pushed against her, a wave of air more like gentle desert wind than the blasting wall of flaming heat that had nearly hit her earlier.

D rose to his feet. "Her heart still beats," he said, and studied the weapon. "The child."

The child was hers, the wind whispered to their ears, a soft rasp like gravel shifting stroking the tones. But the hands that went into my making bled true. I tried to save her, and instead she became...

Not quite a vampire. Doris returned her gaze to the small shape beneath the overshadowing wing. She didn't drink blood, she ventured out on an overcast evening, she didn't heal right. And she had to have changed incredibly gradually, to be frozen at this age when the process must have begun in her infancy.

And she must have spent...centuries underground, with only her mother's bloody body and this strange creature for company. No wonder she was mad.

Doris stared down at the woman's pale, lovely face, its gentle lines. "And her?"

The flames shifted, the dragon's wings spreading, then folding once more. Heat washed in varying waves over her from the movement. I can do nothing for her. There was mourning in that grating, earthen voice. At times I see her shade, lingering—but I can do nothing for her.

Doris looked up at D, a question. He knelt once more, studying the slack, still form, the crumpled blankets still gleaming wetly in places with blood as though it had spilled mere hours ago instead of ages upon ages.

"D?" She pursued when he made no response.

The small, rough voice spoke. "We could—"

"Miss Lang," a horribly familiar male voice called, ringing through the room, "please stand up."

She stared at D in mute shock for a moment, perfectly still. How? She mouthed, and his eyes flicked behind her and narrowed slightly. Then he rose, and she followed suit, pivoting on her heel to see Doctor Oreson striding into the cave with a confident, pleased smile.

"Hands away from your weapons, please, Miss Lang."

The weapon made a sound like bubbling lava flowing over chill water, and steam erupted from the corners of its prison.

"I might have known," Doctor Oreson said, ignoring the hot damp air flooding up. "I couldn't see how you'd managed it—but that's inconsequential." His smile broadened further. "The council will be fascinated to hear what you're up to. Well, hand it over."

Doris planted her hands on her hips and stared at him. "You're gonna have to elaborate, because I've got no idea what the hell you're talking about."

"The key. Give it to me."

"Listen, asshole," she said slowly. "You stole the key from me. I don't know where the hell it is." Doris let a slow, confident smirk slip over her lips. "Lost track of it already? I might have expected, from that shoddy job you did setting me up."

Evidently something in the volley of sharp words struck home; he flushed deeply and his hand tightened on the gun. He was focused on her face now, and she moved her fingers just a little. She'd rile him up a little further before she pushed it. "Don't you mouth off to me! I know you've got it, now hand the goddamn thing over. You know damn well that—"

"That you're a dirty thief," she finished, provoking. "What'd you do? Threaten Madam Bailey? Kill her and hide it in the landslide?" Rage surged up, hot and sudden, at the dull colour he turned at the accusation and the way the skin around his eyes flinched. He was just a man, just a shoddy human criminal, and he'd caused so much damage. "I bet she didn't even put the damn key in the box. You little piece of—"

"Shut up!" He shouted, and the gun's muzzle waved as he gestured emphatically. "Shut up and give me the—"

Doris was already moving. The gun went flying, ripped from his fingers; the whip snapped and coiled around his throat like a serpentine caress, cutting off his air. The end drew blood along his cheek. She hauled and had him on his knees in a heartbeat, choking and clawing at his own skin in a desperate and futile effort to reach the whip.

"You bastard," she seethed, sending it sinking deeper with a twitch of her wrist and making him jerk and flop like a landed fish. And he'd intended to be the conquering hero, had he? Sweeping in to save the village in a time of such crisis not many people would have the energy to look too closely at the sequence of events, too frantic with relief over having the key back. Had he hoped to be the mayor? Who had he been planning on pinning that death on? She didn't even care; she just wanted him dead.

Miss Lang, the weapon said, and she blinked away red rage with an effort and turned, letting the whip slacken slightly. Where is the key?

There was a sharp, ravenous, all-consuming hunger lurking in those brilliant eyes, and the hairs lifted on the back of her neck. She kept her voice perfectly calm as she said, "I don't know. He stole it, but it seems that someone stole it back."

The long, draconic neck lifted; Doris was already turning, realizing why almost after her keyed up body perceived D's movement. She'd grown more attuned to him than she'd realized.

D lifted one hand, coat falling away from his long, dark-clad arm. He was pointing, she realized, to the shadow of the weapon's wing.

"She has it," he said calmly.

They both looked at the small girl, curled up in a soft, shadowed heap against the weapon's side. She didn't react to their scrutiny, apparently sleeping deeply and untroubled. Her soft dark lashes fell against her cheek, and her small hands were fisted against her knees.

"She stole it?" Mania, shock and unexpected amusement mingled in her chest. How...fitting. Had she even known what it was? Had she simply stolen it because he'd shot her, in some strange vengeance? No—she must have known what it was. What with the way her mind did—and didn't—work, Doris couldn't picture her going after it for a more abstract reason. "Good god."

Then the realization hit her in a heartbeat. It's as good as free. But the fiery shape was unmoving, and at least the flickering head turned toward D. Can you? It asked. Can you save her?

Doris looked at Aya. Laid there on the rough ground like a sacrifice, the stillness of her features was curiously peaceful, even with the tragedy written out in the blood splayed around her. "Can you?" She echoed softly.

D was silent for a moment, then his hand moved subtly. "My abilities for tending to others are limited. Could the hospital?" He asked Doris.

She frowned. "With the recent crisis we're strapped for hand, but not technology. I'm not a doctor, but I'm sure they could sew her up—provide blood transfusions—" She looked up at the weapon. The key was getting her there. "But she won't survive the trip."

Its shape fluctuated; the giant eye closed briefly, and then the draconic form had returned. What I have done for both mother and child are interwoven with my bindings. Should I be released, they will break. I cannot reach so far as the hospital with the current state of magic.

"Could you recast the stasis?" Doris asked, mind working. D could fetch his horse—she looked at him. "Wait. Riding, you could get her there in time." She spoke low and urgent. "Couldn't you?"

He hesitated, his absolute stillness almost a warning. "Yes," he said, and was gone.

Suddenly the bright flaming shape of the weapon was much smaller. The human shape knelt by the child and gathered it awkwardly into his arms, as though he wasn't quite sure how to work those limbs in conjunction to others. The girl's dark eyes opened sleepily, a soft question in her face. A trace of rumbling, as though from a distance rockslide, slid through Doris's head. She didn't try to interrupt their private communication.

The little girl smiled slowly and closed her eyes again. "Time to go?" She asked.

Time to go.

Her small hand unfolded, reaching up to him. "I brought you a present," she said, looking hopefully up at him, clearly asking for approval.

The shape bent his face to her head. He lacked facial features except for those eyes, only vague shadows and the blunt shape of something that might have been a simulacrum of a nose. But this had the taste of a familiar gesture; he rubbed his face against her hair, affectionate, and she smiled, eyes drifting closed once more as the distant roughness of his private voice sounded.

The weapon saw Doris looking at him. She is almost gone, he said, and his voice felt curiously close in her head, brushing like velvet rubbed the wrong way over the inside of her skull. He must be speaking to her alone. I cannot keep her.

She realized she'd begun referring to him as 'he' in her head. She suspected it had to do with the way Aya had referred to him, and she suspected there was a reason for Aya's slip into presumption of gender. She had, after all, been married to a man. There were probably associations.

With a quick twist of her whip, Doris snapped the doctor's neck and retracted the whip, coiling it at her side. His body fell to the ground; mingled disgust and a weary sense of relieving finality fell over her. Doris moved over to sink down by Aya, propping her elbows on her knees. The wear of the day was catching up to her in a rush; all her energy was rushing away. She let her head drop forward. "Can they say goodbye?" She said, muffled by her arms.

It didn't answer her in words, but the wave of emotion she received from it was fiercely affirmative.

Doris raised her head and planted her chin on her hands. "What are you going to do?" She asked. "When you get out, I mean."

There was a perfect stillness, and the expression in its eyes as it gazed at her was not entirely friendly. Why?

"I just—it's not right to leave something living here. I wouldn't. But I wondered...are you going to wait for her? Aya?"

A sharp, acidic flare of emotion that she couldn't identify left her dizzy. It would be most unwelcome.

She shrugged. "I don't know. I think she liked you okay, at the end." She'd certainly stopped bemoaning her attachment to it a good long while before disaster struck.

There was silence. Then in a smaller, crackling voice came, perhaps you are a fool. And mistaken.

"Perhaps," Doris agreed.

At last it said, I was always alone.

The humans had found it, so the Nobility must have buried it, careless and indifferent. A living creature. "And she spoke with you. Debated with you," Doris said.

One bright eye rolled to regard her curiously.

"She wrote about it, a little. In the records."

I was so very alone... it said distantly. And she tried. But she could not make herself be cruel. Silence, for a long aching space. I thought her my friend. She was the only person I ever knew, after those-that-made-me. The only mortal who... Its voice faced. Doris didn't push, unwilling to intrude, and they sat in silence until D reappeared at the mouth of the cave.

"I'm ready," he said, and turned his gaze to the weapon.

It lost the human shape, rising in an opening shadow of wings and indistinct limbs. The child rose to her feet slowly, face tired but calm, and smiled brightly at Doris. Doris managed to muster a smile in return with difficulty, and the weapon lifted the key and, human shaped once more, pressed it to the place where a human heart might be hidden behind a cage of ribs.

The key sank inside. There was a soft, sharp click, audible, and it turned it twice to the right. The little girl reached up and took its other hand, and the sigils surrounding them began to glow white-hot and melt, surprisingly softly for an event so dramatic.

When they stepped beyond the barrier, however, the girl crumpled suddenly. It bent and lifted her smoothly, resuming a strange and stomach-turning mishmash of human and draconic shapes, scales writhing over arms and tails coiling around its midsection, and it carried her to her mother as Aya took a deep, sudden breath and cried out.

She looked up at them as they knelt beside her on opposite sides, Doris and the weapon. Her eyes were clear and dark, calm. "I thought I was asleep," she whispered, and the cool stillness of stasis was replaced by a truly terrible colour and feeble, wet breaths.

"We're going to take you to the hospital," Doris said gently. "But first—you have to say goodbye."

Aya looked up without confusion, eyes seeking out first the fiery eyes of the weapon, and then the tangled dark hair that was all she could see of her own child. She reached up and brushed the hair aside, studying the small face and weak smile. "Darling," she whispered.

The little girl beamed. "That's my name," she told Doris, as though coming to a revelation. And then, in its arms, she faded to so much dust and bone shards in a fine white dress.

They didn't have time to mourn. Doris swept the blankets up around Aya and lifted her to D's arms; he was gone in a heartbeat, moving swiftly down the tunnels, and Doris spared the weapon, still kneeling with the dress in its arms, only a bare glance before following. She was no match for a dhampir's speed, but she was fast all on her own, and the time he spent securing Aya in front of him allowed Doris to emerge from the tunnels. He looked down at her, extending a hand and she shook her head. He'd move faster with only two.

He was gone in a rush of wind and thundering hooves, and behind her rose a roar of pain that pressed against her ear drums, made it suddenly thickly difficult to draw in breath. The agony in that inhuman howl was like a hot knife in her gut, crushing her to the muddy ground. She clamped her hands against her stomach and squeezed her eyes shut, gasping for breath as her forehead pressed against the dirt and stone.

And then it was gone, and in its absence a cold wash of loss rushed in, salty like tears or the bitterly cold ocean. Something had been lost, she knew, that would never be replaced.

Two days later they were sitting in a chilly unfamiliar room.

The woman's hands trembled, ever so softly, but the tea didn't spill and the cups didn't rattle, steam curling pleasantly from the surface of her liquid. The chipped tray made a soft click as it met the scarred, battered wooden table top, and Doris politely accepted the small cup nudged her way.

"I'm glad you came," the vampire's wife said, erect and dry-eyed. She had short-cut dark hair and wide pale eyes; the look of initial shell shock had faded under grief, but her composure was tight now, pain showing at the corners of her eyes. She hesitated, glancing between them, and then spoke to D. "Tell me. Was his death--?"

"It was quick," he responded evenly.

She looked back to Doris, quickly, as though it unnerved her to look at him long. It must have been a familiar reaction to him; humans were uneasy around dhampirs, as a rule. "Thank you," she repeated. "For coming."

The house was small, obsessively neat and shared. There was a rough-hewn crib in one corner, painstakingly cleaned but ragged-edged bags surrounding it. The woman sat on a torn cushion, her knees together and hands rested on them, posture perfect. She had returned to it after only a day; he hadn't known. He hadn't ventured near. There were children here, and the temptation was too great.

"He died knowing he'd saved you," Doris said gently, tactfully excluding a few key details--like the fact that there was nothing to save her from, that only the unfortunate incident of one almost-vampire's confused madness had ever orchestrated the tragedy. His memory was kinder kept as nobility. The woman nodded, her eyes flaring with unshed tears.

"Thank you," she said, one last time, and closed her eyes.

Out in the gray light of day, Doris fastened her coat around her and tipped her chin up to study the sky. The breeze lifted strands of her hair, blowing them against her mouth and eyes.

"You'll be leaving now?" He asked.

"One last visit."

The door giving softly under her fingertips, she pushed inside a small hospital room, smelling the sharp sting of antiseptic, wet mud, and a soft floral musk.

The woman in the hospital bed turned toward her, smooth dark hair falling forward over her shoulders. Her eyes were dulled by painkillers but perceptive. “You must be Miss Lang,” she said softly. “Mrs. Renshawe told me about you.”

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Doris said, and stuck out her hand. They exchanged firm handshakes, though Aya’s grip had likely been softened by weakness.

“You rescued me. You and your young man.”

Doris leaned a hip on the end of the bed. “No,” she said. “We were just—the cleanup crew.” She met Aya’s eyes. “You know who really saved you.”

“Yeah,” she said softly after a beat of silence. “I suppose I do.”

“I would have loved to stay until you were on your feet again,” Doris said. “Try to help out and all. But things are a little hot for me around here at the moment, and Mrs. Renshawe thinks it might be wisest to hit the road. I just wanted to say goodbye.”

“I appreciate it,” the woman said, giving her a tired smile. “Thank you, Miss Lang.”

She made it to the door before something made her turn back, some instinct or stupidity. “Aya,” Doris said impulsively after a moment. Aya looked up again, eyebrows raised inquiringly. “What are you going to do, when you get out of here?”

She didn’t pretend not to understand what the question meant. “I suppose—” She said, slowly, “—I think—I might take a horse up into the mountains.”

Doris grinned, unable to help herself, and turned back toward the door. Aya’s voice stopped her before she could open it. “Doris—”

She turned, arching an eyebrow.

“It’s going to take a while to get out of here,” Aya said, and there was something almost like fear in her eyes.

“I don’t know if you’ve been told, but it’s been about a hundred years since you should have been dead,” Doris said lightly. “If that didn’t teach it patience, nothing will.”

She saw the warm smile bloom, rueful and genuine, as the door closed behind her.

“So,” Doris said, gathering up the reins of her horses and looking up at D. The wagon was attached once more—long stripped of the supplies she’d originally carried, but whole and polished like new. Mud already clung to the wheels, but despite the pale gray sky, she felt like the sun was peeking back in. The town, badly wounded and near-crippled as it had been, was getting its feet back under it again.

He had turned toward her, the shadow of his hat falling over his face.

“Feel like a visit?” She asked, her own cautious, rueful smile blooming hopefully.

His horse shifted. After a moment he said steadily, “I’ll ride with you a while.”

Doris was grinning when they hit the road out of town, and up again she could see blue sky peeking through the storm clouds and promising a beautiful day.


End file.
